Licensed practical nurse
category of nurse in some countries
A licensed practical nurse (LPN), in much of the United States and Canada, is a nurse who provides direct nursing care for people who are sick, injured, convalescent, or disabled. In the United States, LPNs work under the direction of physicians, mid-level practitioners, and may work under the direction of registered nurses depending on their jurisdiction.
In Canada, LPNs' scope of practice is autonomously similar to the registered nurse in providing direct nursing care. They are also responsible for their individual actions and practice.
Another title provided in the Canadian province of Ontario is registered practical nurse (RPN). In California and Texas, such a nurse is referred to as a licensed vocational nurse (LVN).
In the United States, LPN training programs are one to two years in duration. All U.S. state and territorial boards also require passage of the NCLEX-PN exam. In Canada (except for Québec), the education program is two years of full-time post-secondary and students must pass the Canadian Practical Nurse Registration Exam (CPNRE), administered by the for-profit Yardstick Assessment Strategies. In 2022, Ontario and British Columbia plan to discontinue CPNRE in favour of the REx-PN, administered by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN).
The public source identifies “Licensed practical nurse” as category of nurse in some countries. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Licensed, practical and nurse.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11848548. The Library of Congress control number is sh85106045. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2022.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Licensed practical nurse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.