Licensed Practical Nurse

What the work actually is

O*NET, on licensed practical and vocational nurses: observe patients, charting and reporting changes in patients' conditions, such as adverse reactions to medication or treatment, and taking any necessary action; measure and record patients' vital signs; administer prescribed medications or start intravenous fluids, noting times and amounts on patients' charts; provide basic patient care or treatments, such as dressing wounds, treating bedsores, giving enemas, or performing catheterizations; answer patients' calls and determine how to assist them; supervise nurses' aides or assistants; evaluate nursing intervention outcomes, conferring with other healthcare team members as necessary.

⚠ Two of those deserve emphasis because students underestimate them. Observe patients … and take any necessary action is judgement, exercised alone, often at night — an LPN is frequently the most qualified person physically present in a long-term care facility. And supervise nurses' aides means the job includes managing other people from the first week.

Projected need

O*NET, on the federal projections: 651,400 employed (2024), growth average (3–4%) to 2034, 54,400 openings a year, median wages $64,400 (2025).

Florida produces 1,322 practical-nursing completions a year across 48 public institutions — the widest programme footprint of any credential on this site, health or trade. ⚠ It is genuinely available near almost everyone in the state, which is not true of most of the occupations here.

⚠⚠⚠ Before you enrol, look up the programme's pass rate — Florida law publishes it

This is the most useful thing on this page, and almost nobody knows it exists.

Section 464.019(4), Florida Statutes, requires the Board of Nursing to publish on its website, for every approved programme, the graduate passage rates on the licensure examination for the most recent two calendar years, together with the programme's accreditation status — updated quarterly.

And the Board acts on those numbers. Under s. 464.019(5), a programme whose graduate passage rate is more than 10 percentage points below the average for comparable programmes for two consecutive calendar years is placed on probationary status; if it does not recover within two years the Board shall terminate the program, with one possible one-year extension where adequate progress is shown.

⚠⚠ So the quality of a nursing programme is a published, quarterly-updated number, and it is the question to ask on the tour. Two programmes the same distance from your house, costing about the same, can sit twenty points apart on first-attempt NCLEX-PN passage. ⚠ Ask for the figure in writing; ask whether the programme has ever been on probationary status; and be wary of any answer that talks about pass rates without giving you one.

⚠⚠ Two live course families, and the technical colleges hold the bigger one

Florida's current framework is Practical Nursing, 1,350 hours, with two occupational completion points built on PRN0098 (Foundations 1), then PRN0099, PRN0290, PRN0291 and PRN0690. Those numbers are carried by the state colleges.

⚠ Thirty technical colleges instead carry PRN0091, PRN0092 and PRN0096 — Practical Nurse 1, 2 and 3 — which the current framework does not list. Both families are live, both are Board-approved routes, and both end at the same examination. The practical consequences are narrow but worth knowing:

• The course numbers on your transcript will differ from the framework, and from another Florida graduate's.
• ⚠ Clock hours are not college credit. If an LPN-to-RN bridge is the plan, ask the receiving college what it grants for your specific programme — in writing, before you enrol, not after.
• Neither family is the better one. Board approval and the published pass rate are what distinguish programmes, not the numbering.

⚠ Note also what the ladder does NOT do here. In the trades on this site, every completion point is a job you can take. In practical nursing there is one credential at the end and it is a licence — finishing part of the programme does not let you practise.

The rungs below, and why they matter more than they look

Three short credentials sit underneath, and in Florida they are unusually well-supplied:

• Basic Healthcare Worker (HSC0003) — 55 institutions. The most widely carried course in the entire state catalogue, and the standard first step into every health programme.
• Nurse aide / CNA — 40 institutions (HCP0121, plus PRN0090 at 9). A few weeks of training, a state examination, and a job in a hospital or nursing home.
• Patient care technician — 20 institutions (PRN0094). The CNA plus phlebotomy, EKG and more clinical skill; better paid, and the usual stepping stone.

⚠⚠ This is the part of the ladder that makes nursing financially possible for people without savings. Florida awarded 922 nursing-assistant credentials at 42 institutions in 2023. Work as a CNA or PCT, get hired by a hospital system, and ask about tuition assistance — many of the large employers pay for the next credential, and you arrive in the LPN programme already comfortable with patients, which is the single best predictor of getting through it.

Necessary skills

• Pharmacology and arithmetic under pressure. Dosage calculation is where students most often fail, and the standard is exactness, not a good average.
• Assessment. Noticing that something has changed before a monitor does.
• Documentation. The chart is a legal record and the only proof of what you observed and did.
• ⚠ Physical and emotional stamina. Twelve-hour shifts, lifting, nights, weekends, and patients who die. This is real and it is what people leave over.
• Communication with families, who are frightened and are frequently talking to you rather than to the physician.

Advice

• ⚠ Check the published NCLEX-PN pass rate and the accreditation status on the Board of Nursing website before you apply. It is free, it is quarterly, and it is the law that it be there.
• Start the background screening and immunisations early. Florida Level 2 fingerprint screening, immunisation records, TB screening, drug screening, health insurance and CPR certification all gate clinical placement, and a delay here costs a whole cohort year.
• ⚠⚠ Decide early whether the LPN is the destination or the step. The RN associate degree pays substantially more and opens the whole ladder above it; the LPN gets you earning a year or two sooner. Both are defensible — but if the RN is the plan, choose an LPN programme with a written bridge agreement.
• Know where LPNs actually work in Florida: long-term care, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, home health, correctional health and physician offices. ⚠ Hospitals in many markets now hire few LPNs for inpatient units, so do not plan on a hospital floor job without checking local postings first.
• Ask about the attrition rate as well as the pass rate. A programme can post a high pass rate by removing students before the examination; the honest question is how many people who started finished.