If you are interested in studying to become a Licensed Practical Nurse but cannot afford the tuition do not despair, as there are many free online LPN classes offered on the Internet. Be careful which free online courses you choose though, as many of them are nothing more than scams and do not give you all the training required for a LPN. Some free online LPN classes will just provide you with very basic notes, no online assistance, no hands-on training, and they are not accredited either, which means that you will not be able to gain licensure.
Not all free online LPN classes are useless though, as many of them are offered by good schools and universities that are participants in the OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. These programs are accredited, and the subject matter that is covered is up-to-date, relevant and presented in a format that is easy to understand, and the programs also include online assistance.
The online classes offered by reputable community and technical colleges as part of certificate and associate’s degree programs prepare students for the National Council Licensure Examination for practical nurses (NCLEX-PN). The course content covers patient care, taking vital signs, evaluating patients, planning, anatomy, medical terminology, and ethics.
Overview Of Free Online LPN Classes
Established free online LPN classes will teach you everything you need to know about health care agencies, what it is like to work in a hospital, and holistic patient care. Activities will be overseen by qualified instructors, and the institution will offer online support. Many of the classes have flexible schedules, which is the great thing about studying online, as it means that you can study whilst still working at you normal job, or study whilst meeting your familial obligations. Other classes are only offered at specific times, which mean that you have to be available to be online at those times. Make sure that the online classes that you choose fit in with your schedule.
Admission requirements differ for different free online LPN classes, so it is best to check what the requirements are for the particular course in which you are interested. Many of the courses require that a student passes a reading and writing assessment examination prior to admission, and some also require a 2.5 grade or higher, and others that some pre-clinical courses need to have been done first.
Types Of Online LPN Classes Offered
Anatomy And Physiology Classes
Anatomy and Physiology classes will introduce you to the major systems of the human body such as the nervous system and the skeletal system, their location and function. Subjects will include the skin, muscles, blood composition, joints, and cell function. Other subjects could include circulatory, digestive, respiratory, and urinary systems, depending on the level of the course.
Medical Terminology Classes
Medical terminology LPN classes will imbue you with a broad overview of common medical terms and phrases which will enable you to engage with patients and other healthcare professionals. You will be taught the terminology; the meaning of medical suffixes and prefixes how to spell them, and common medical abbreviations. Some classes will also teach you how to make the best use of medical dictionaries in order to help your career.
Pharmacology For Nursing Classes
Pharmacology is the study of the uses and effects of medicinal drugs. These free online LPN classes will teach you about the most common drugs used to treat illness and disease, their side-effects and functions, and your role as an LPN in delivering them to patients.
Surgical Nursing Classes
Surgical nursing classes address the licensed practical nurse’s role in caring for surgical patients. Subjects covered in these classes may include the management of multiple patients, preparing patients for surgical procedures, long-term care, hospital admission and discharge procedures, and recognizing irregular body functions.
Pediatric Nursing Classes
Pediatric nursing covers diseases and illnesses that affect children. Subjects in these classes will include typical child development and the assessment, prevention and treatment of abnormal health conditions in children. Communication also forms a big part of this type of course, as pediatric nurses need to know how to communicate effectively with children from different cultures and backgrounds and their families.
Universities Offering Free Online LPN Classes
Universities offering free online LPN classes via the OpenCourseWare project includeKaplanUniversityand theUniversityofMassachusettsatBoston(UMass Boston). These classes provide the LPN student with in-depth lecture notes that are written by preeminent researchers on various topics that are explored in top online LPN courses, and can provide helpful
The courses covered by the OCW project cover all the fundamentals of the nursing practice and will also provide you with the opportunity to develop your critical writing and reading skills which are integral to the licensed practical nurse’s job.
Educational Materials
The reason that universities offer these free online LPN classes via the OpenCourseWare project is so that educational materials can be made available for free via the Internet to those individuals who are interested in studying to become licensed practical nurses who would otherwise not be able to do so due to financial constraints.
The OCW course materials often include group assignments and laboratory exercises, and you should just complete the exercises that you can do, such as problem sets and reading assignments.
Kaplan University
KaplanUniversityoffers a nursing fundamentals course consisting of ten units which covers nutrition and elimination, legal and professional issues in nursing, growth and development, oxygenation and mobility, and problem solving and decision making.
Other fundamental nursing topics that are covered include patient safety, bathing and grooming, taking vital signs, and initial assessment and personal care.
All materials necessary to complete all ten lessons are provided, so there are absolutely no expenses for those who are interested in taking these classes.
University Of Massachusetts At Boston (UMass Boston)
UMass Boston offers two free online LPN classes:
- Health Assessment and Promotion
These classes teach you about the different aspects of patient health assessment, including conducting patient interviews and performing physical assessments, and taking patient histories.
Some additional materials and two textbooks are recommended to aid you in your studies, and the site offers a full page dedicated to American Psychological Association (APA) style resources.
- Professional Issues in Nursing
The Professional Issues in Nursing course is designed for Licensed practical nurses who are in leadership roles, and will teach you reading and writing skills, and how to develop critical thinking.
This is an intermediate-level course, and includes subjects such as leadership theory and health care cost management, nursing practice and ethical dilemmas, management theory, and nursing practice and legal issues.
Assignments are posted on the website for the course, and the site also provides a page which contains a list of recommended and required reading materials such as textbooks and journal articles. PowerPoint slide presentations for each weekly topic can also be found on this page. Other slide shows that you can access are on topics such as nursing history, research, and nursing standards of practice. The site also contains a link to Reference Point software so that you can document research material in the style of the American Psychological Association.
University Of North Carolina
TheUniversityofNorth Carolina’sChapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health offers free online LPN classes in Medical Terminology and Abbreviations. This objective of these classes is to teach you how to understand patient notes and medical charges, and how to recognize clinical terms associated with physical examinations, x-rays, and lab results.
Tutorials are given via a slide show and audio presentation, together with an outline and transcription in PDF format. You will need a web browser with cookies and JavaScript enabled, a current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader or Adobe Flash Player and speakers.
The tutorial may be used for 30 minutes of continuing education credit (CEU) upon completion of the post-test. This can also be used as a refresher course and the references can also be used to further your LPN studies.
Tufts University
TuftsUniversityoffers free online LPN classes in Human Growth and Development. These free online LPN classes cover the growth and development of bone, tissue and the brain, and will teach you how to ask important questions of patients suffering from undiagnosed illnesses as a result of physical and mental developmental processes.
You will learn that there are disabilities, conditions and diseases that are a result of the disruption of the development of mental or physical processes; learn about the normal “landscape” that can direct our exploration in clinical encounters; understanding of the precipitants to disease and disability, and learn that knowledge about growth and development provides a model for understanding more deeply who a patient is as a person.
The subject-matter is studied in two ways: by studying the individual at various cross-sectional ages/stages of life, and by following various developmental “tracks” longitudinally from birth to death. Popular content in these classes include Cognitive Development: Overview; Growth and Development: An Overview; Sleep deprivation; A Look at Motor Development in Children, and Communication Development Overview.
Columbia University
ColumbiaUniversityoffers free online LPN classes called Biography of the AIDS Epidemic, which can provide important supplementary material for LPN students. This course follows the medical history of AIDS through oral history and centers on interviews with one of the earliest AIDS researchers, Ronald Bayer.
You will be taken on a tour through the planning and execution of an oral history project through the mediums of collected readings and resources, constructive advice and tips, sample planning documents, anecdotes.
Upon completion of the classes you will have the knowledge to process an oral-history project and its potential uses, and will be able to make use of your newly-acquired knowledge to make skillful use of existing oral histories or embark on an oral-history project of your own
MIT
One of the free online LPN classes offered by MIT is Introduction to Biology, which is a core LPN module. The curriculum consists of a complete set of video lectures and visual aids on the principles of molecular biology by Professor Graham Walker, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor and a director of the HHMI Education group at MIT, and Professor Sallie W. Chisholm, Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and co-director of the MIT Earth Systems Initiative. They provide vital information to LPN students taking an online course in biology.
The program covers all the same core material as the MIT Biology Department core courses, 7.012, 7.013, and 7.014. It includes the fundamental principles of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and cell biology. Also emphasized is biological function at the molecular level, which covers the structure and synthesis of proteins, the structure and regulation of genes, how the molecules are integrated into cells, and how the cells are then integrated into multi-cellular systems and organisms.
The Open University
The Open University offers free online LPN classes in patient care and mental health called Caring in Hospitals. Case studies from aGeneralHospitalare used to examine how doctors and nurses interact with patients and provide care through their day-to-day work.
The course also looks at people who various roles in the hospital, how they interact with each other and with patients, what they consider to be `care’ and the different contributions and approaches used by nurses and doctors to supply this care. Patients are also given a chance to give their perspective on the care that they receive.
The above courses are not full LPN programs, but extra free online LPN classes that can be taken either in conjunction with your regular LPN course or afterwards as additional information. Most of them do not lead to credits, altho0ugh there are a few that do. The best way to decide on which class to take is to do thorough research and see which suit your needs, dependent on where you are in your studies.