Licensed Practical Nurse Interview Questions
& Model Answers, 2026

The universal boundaries are the initial comprehensive assessment, creating or changing the nursing care plan, evaluating a patient's response for a plan change, and IV push medications and blood administration in most states. Many states restrict central line care, hanging certain IV medications, and telephone orders. Say your state explicitly, say that you check the board of nursing rather than the facility's habit, and say what you do when asked to exceed it.

Verify the order and the sliding scale, check the blood glucose within the ordered window, confirm the patient with two identifiers, select the correct insulin and confirm the type — a long-acting given as short-acting is a sentinel event — perform an independent double check where required, use the correct syringe and site rotation, confirm the resident is eating for a mealtime dose, document immediately, and monitor for hypoglycaemia. Say what you do when the glucose is below the hold parameter.

Check the order and the treatment sheet, gather supplies, pain medicate in advance if needed, hand hygiene and clean or sterile technique per policy, remove the old dressing observing drainage and odour, assess and measure length, width and depth with tunnelling and undermining, cleanse per order, apply the ordered product, date and initial the dressing, and document with a comparison to the last assessment. Report deterioration, new odour or signs of infection to the RN and the provider.

Do not leave the unit. Recount with the other nurse, check the administration record and any wasted doses and witness signatures, look at the pharmacy delivery and returns, and if it does not reconcile notify the charge nurse or supervisor immediately and follow the facility's diversion policy with written documentation. Never sign a count you have not verified and never resolve it informally the next day.

You can delegate stable, routine, predictable tasks — vitals, hygiene, ambulation, feeding, intake and output, blood glucose checks where permitted — with clear instruction about what to report. You cannot delegate assessment, judgement, teaching, medication administration or anything on an unstable patient. Confirm competence, remain accountable, and follow up. Interviewers listen for whether you supervise or merely assign.

Reassess manually, take a full set of vitals including pulse, respirations, oxygen saturation and temperature, check blood glucose, review what medications were given, look for bleeding, dehydration and infection, ensure safety from falls, and report to the RN or the provider promptly with an SBAR. Anticipate holding the antihypertensive and getting orders. Document the time you reported and the response — a change reported at the end of shift is the classic deficiency.

Document at the point of administration rather than in a batch at the end, never pre-chart, use the electronic record's checks rather than overriding them, follow up every hold or refusal with a documented reason and a report to the nurse or provider, reconcile new orders against the record when they arrive, and clarify anything illegible or ambiguous before giving it. A clean MAR is the single most examined document in a long-term care survey.

Give the specific request, that you declined and explained why, who you escalated to, and how you made sure the patient still got what they needed. Employers ask this because short-staffed buildings pressure LPNs constantly, and a nurse who bends on scope is a licence risk to themselves and the facility.

Show that you listened without defending, addressed what you could, were honest about what needed the RN or the provider, involved the charge nurse or manager appropriately, and followed up. Do not describe an argument you won.

Describe addressing it directly and privately, being specific about the task and the standard, offering help if it was a workload problem, and reporting to the charge nurse or manager if it continued. LPNs supervise without formal authority in most settings, so this answer shows whether you can hold a line without a title.

A late medication, a missed dose, a documentation error: describe what you did for the patient first, that you reported it yourself, the incident report, and what changed in your practice. Nurses who report their own errors are the ones managers trust with a med cart.

Use the published national figure as the anchor: licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses have a BLS OEWS May 2025 median of $64,400 a year, about $30.96 an hour, with the top 10% above $83,440. Then ask what the starting rate is here, how prior experience is credited on the scale, and what the differentials are, because most facilities pay a scale rather than a negotiated rate.

Ask for the evening, night and weekend differentials as explicit hourly figures and whether they stack, since long-term care and hospital employers differ widely. Also ask about a charge differential if LPNs take charge on a hall, and whether there is a premium for picking up extra shifts. On a night and weekend rotation the differentials can be the difference between two otherwise identical offers.

IV certification funding where your state requires it, wound care or gerontology certification support, tuition assistance and scheduling flexibility for an LPN-to-RN bridge programme, guaranteed hours, the hall assignment and resident ratio, and health coverage start date. The bridge-programme support is the item with the largest long-term value.