LPN Job Description: Template, Duties, Requirements & Pay (2026)

An LPN — a licensed practical nurse, called an LVN in California and Texas — provides direct nursing care under the direction of a registered nurse or physician: vitals, wound care, medication administration where the state allows it, charting, and the daily contact that tells the team how a patient is really doing. Below is a copy-paste LPN job description template and what reaching licensed nurses costs in Boostpoint's campaign data.

What an LPN does

The scope is set by your state and by the setting, but the core is consistent: monitor and record vital signs, provide basic bedside care, change dressings and manage wounds, assist with bathing, mobility and feeding, collect samples, administer medications where the state permits, listen to patients and families, and report changes up to the RN or physician. In long-term care the LPN is frequently the senior clinician on the floor for an entire shift, which is a different job from the same title in a clinic.

The BLS counts 666,900 LPNs and LVNs in 2025 at a median of $30.96 an hour, or $64,400 a year, with about 51,800 openings projected each year over the decade and 3% growth for 2025–35. Entry requires a postsecondary nondegree award: certificate and diploma programs, commonly at community colleges and technical schools and in some high schools, typically take about a year, after which candidates must pass an exam to become licensed.

That combination — a real credential, a one-year path, and 51,800 openings a year — is the whole recruiting problem in one line. Every applicant you want already holds a license and already has options. Nothing in your posting will create supply; the posting only decides whether the people who exist choose you.

LPN job description template

Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and cut anything that does not apply. It is ordered the way licensed nurses read a posting: pay, shift, ratio, setting, then the rest.

Requirements: what to keep, what to soften, and what quietly costs you applicants

Nursing postings rarely fail on the requirements list. They fail on what they leave out.

Requirement	What to know
License	Non-negotiable and easy to state. Candidates must complete a state-approved educational program and pass an exam to be licensed, so a current license in the state of practice is a legitimate hard requirement. Say whether you will consider a license pending, a compact license or an out-of-state candidate you will help endorse — those three sentences widen a small pool considerably.
Scope of practice	Write it for your state, not from a template you found. What an LPN may administer, start or assess varies, and a posting that promises duties your state does not allow reads as careless to the exact person you are trying to hire.
Ratio and staffing	Publish it. The number of residents or patients per nurse, and how many aides are on the floor, is the single most predictive detail of whether an experienced LPN applies. Leaving it out does not hide a hard assignment; it just moves the discovery to week two.
Certifications	Separate required from paid-for. Optional certifications are available through professional associations in areas such as gerontology, wound care and intravenous therapy. Requiring one shrinks your pool; funding one is a recruiting line.
Experience	State a floor and mean it. With about 51,800 openings a year, a two-year minimum on a role a new graduate could do with support is a choice to leave the position open. If you have a preceptor program, that belongs in the first half of the posting.
Shift and weekends	Lead with it, in dollars. Shift, weekend frequency and whether overtime is ever mandated decide more LPN applications than the base rate does. A stated differential is more persuasive than a vague “competitive pay and benefits”.

How to customize it for your setting

Skilled nursing and long-term care

Be specific about the floor. Residents per nurse, aides per shift, whether an RN is on site overnight, and how med pass is structured tell an experienced LPN more than any description of culture. This is also where the LPN is most often the senior clinician present, and saying so respectfully is a genuine draw for the right person.

Assisted living and memory care

The clinical load is lighter and the relational load is heavier. Say what the resident population is like, how much of the day is medication administration versus assessment, and what support exists on a difficult afternoon. Candidates leaving skilled nursing for pace are your natural audience.

Clinic and physician practice

Predictability is the offer: no nights, no weekends, no holidays. If that is true, it belongs in line one, because it is worth several dollars an hour to a nurse with school-age children.

Home health and hospice

Autonomy, driving and documentation define the day. State the visit target, the territory radius, the mileage rate and how charting is done, because those four numbers are what an experienced home health LPN compares between offers.

If you are filling shifts rather than writing the description, the recruiting side — where licensed nurses are, what the ad should say, and what an applicant costs to reach — is on our nursing shortage solutions page.

Writing the ad version

The template above belongs in your ATS and on your careers page. The advertisement that runs on Facebook or Instagram is far shorter and answers three questions in the first two lines: how much, what shift, what ratio. Something like: "LPN — $28–$33/hr plus night and weekend differential. 3x12s, every third weekend, no mandated overtime. [City]. Apply in 60 seconds, no résumé."

Then two or three knockout questions on the form — license status, shift availability, distance — and nothing else. Every extra field costs completions, and each screening question trades volume for precision. The mechanics are in our candidate conversion rate guide, and fifteen worked examples are in our help wanted ad examples library.

Licensed practical nurse, LVN, practical nurse: one licence, two state names

LPN stands for licensed practical nurse. In California and Texas the same licence is called licensed vocational nurse, or LVN, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the two together as a single occupation of 666,900 people. Practical nurse on its own is the older term and still appears in programme names and in some state statutes. What none of these titles are is interchangeable with registered nurse: an RN completes an associate or bachelor degree and passes a different examination, while the practical nursing route is typically about a year to a postsecondary nondegree award.

For a posting the practical point is search behaviour rather than terminology. A licensed nurse in Sacramento or Houston is looking for LVN roles and may never see a posting titled LPN; everywhere else the reverse holds. If you staff across those markets, run the title the local licence uses rather than a single national one, and keep both phrases in the body so the posting is findable either way.

Pay, employment, outlook, education, program length, licensure and certifications: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses (last modified August 27, 2026; 2025 wage and employment data), read August 28, 2026. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — LPN and LVN role family, 57 campaign-months, advertising costs only. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Last updated August 2026.