Legal Nurse Advisor

Posts Tagged ‘Registered Practical Nurse’

There are three types of nursing if you are considering nursing as a career in Canada:

Licensed Practical Nurse, LPN Registered Nurse, RN Registered Psychiatric Nurse, RPN

In Canada all nursing professions are regulated in the public interest and you must pass a licensing exam to become registered in order to practice nursing as a career.

Nursing education for each of these types of nursing has common curricular components and some specialty components. However, the length of nursing education varies and each category has a defined scope of practice.

Licensed Practical Nurse

The Licensed Practical Nurse has 1-2 years of education in a community college or private post-secondary training institute. They have a limited nursing scope of practice that is completely contained within the scope of practice of a registered nurse and cannot work with clients who are complex or require multiple interventions.

In Ontario and some other provinces they are called a Registered Practical Nurse and this is abbreviated as RPN. This can be confusing because a registered psychiatric nurse is also abbreviated as RPN in the western provinces. In many provinces LPN’s were not fully utilized for many years and the numbers of nurses practicing as a licensed practical nurse declined dramatically. Because of the pressures exerted by fiscal restraint and by the nursing shortage which is quite acute, the licensed practical nurse is now in demand again in provinces where they can legally practice.