[Born Conservative]

Often they are merely LPN's with two years of junior college.

LPN's (at least in Pennsylvania) usually attend a LPN school, and do not receive college credits. RN's are trained either through a "diploma school", junior college, or 4 year college.

many of the RN's I've had privilege to work with were not the brightest bulbs in the drawer...just average to slightly above average in intelligence. They had very narrow understanding of medical issues, despite...or perhaps because of...their nurses training.
 

Where did YOU work? I can say that when I graduated from nursing school, most of those who were not "the brightest bulbs in the drawer" were weeded out before we took our boards.

I agree that there are a lot of school nurses that are policy wonks, and put a priority on paper work over patient care. Surprisingly, many school nurses don't have Pediatric experience. I would like to say, though, that there are good school nurses, as well as good LPN's.

[SarahW]

In Virginia LPN's usually get their training through community college courses, which include hands-on clinical "service work".

RN's get their "letters" in similar fashion to Pennsylvania.

Don't get me wrong, I've known *brilliant* nurses, who chose nursing over an M.D. ER/trauma nurses, and nurses with other specialized training are among the most impressive individuals I've met in a lifetime.

We might quibble over the definition of a dullard, you at least need a work ethic and average to slightly above average brains to get through nursing school. That said,
nurses I've known were , and their knowlege of medicine was suprisingly (to me) narrow and shallow.

In general, their thinking was not nuanced, to put it most kindly.

The nurses I worked with were not dumb as rocks...just limited in the depth and breadth of their understanding. They might simply have been out of their element, for they were being asked to contribute to insurance and medical-legal decisions.