To be a nurse UK, you must be a registered member of the Nursing Midwifery Council or the NMC. The NMC is the regulatory body for specialist community public health nurses, midwifery, and nurse UK. And if you are a nurse who acquired a nursing degree outside of the European Economic Area or EEA, who wish to work as nurse UK, you must successfully complete the Overseas Nursing Program or the ONP. The ONP is the standard training set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council that all nurse UK applicants who earned a degree in nursing or trained outside the EU must complete. The program consists of a compulsory 20 day protected learning and supervised practice. This includes health and safety issues, UK law, drugs administration, record keeping, and the NMC code of conduct. For a list of the approved Overseas Nursing Program in the United Kingdom, you may log to their website at www.nmc-uk.org/aArticle.aspx?ArticleID=2566
All nurse UK applicants who are trained outside the European Economic Area or EEA but want to work as nurse UK, must also pass the International English Language Test or the IELTS. The scores listed below must be met or surpassed by the nurse UK applicant in order to pass the IELTS:
- 7.0 in the listening and reading sections
- 7.0 in the writing and speaking section
- overall average score of 7 (out of a possible 9)
All nurse UK applicants are evaluated based on their own individual capacity. This takes into consideration their acquired nurse training. For the nurse UK registration, the NMC charges a fee of £140 for application processing. After registration, the nurse UK applicant will receive a card that shows their Personal Identification Number.
Only applicants for nurse UK who have first level qualification are accepted by the NMC. Those who only possess second level nurse UK qualifications are not accepted. These second level qualifications includes licensed practical nurses, nurses who only attended a basic nursing program, staff nurses in South Africa, state certified nurses, community nurses, nursery nurses, vocational nurses in the US, and mother craft nurses.
For nurses living in the UK who are trained overseas, the best way to upgrade their nursing qualifications to a European first level nurse criteria is to attend a school of nursing based at a university.
For a more detailed information on the nurse UK qualifications, you may log on to their website at
http://www.rcn.org.uk/nursing/comingtouk/about-immigration-service/noneu_nurses