To practice midwifery or nursing in UK, a nurse or midwife must be registered with the Nursing Midwifery Council or NMC. The NMC is the regulatory body for specialist community public health nurses, midwifery, and nursing in UK. And if you are a midwife or a nurse trained or acquired a nursing degree outside the European Economic Area or EEA, who wish to register in the UK, you will have to successfully complete the ONP. The ONP or the Overseas Nursing Program is the standard training set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) that all applicants trained outside the EU must complete. The program is composed of a compulsory 20 day period of protected learning and supervised practice. This includes UK law, health and safety issues, record keeping, drugs administration and the NMC code of conduct. For a list of the approved ONP in the United Kingdom click HERE.
All overseas nurses who are trained outside the EEA but want to practice nursing in UK, will also have to pass the International English Language Test or the IELTS. The following scores listed below have to be achieved by all nurses and midwives in order to pass the IELTS:
- at least 7.0 in the listening and reading sections
- at least 7.0 in the writing and speaking section
- an overall average score of 7 (out of a possible 9)
Each midwife or nursing in UK applicant is evaluated on an individual basis, taking into consideration their basic nurse training acquired. For their nursing in UK registration, the NMC charges £140 for processing their registration application. After that, the nursing in UK applicant will then receive a card showing their Personal Identification Number.
Only nursing in UK applicants with a first level qualification are accepted by the NMC. Those who have only undertaken a basic nursing program, an enrolled nurse, licensed practical nurse, vocational nurse in the USA, community nurse, state certified nurse, staff nurse in South Africa, mother craft nurse, and nursery nurse, are not accepted by the NMC because they are only considered second level qualifications.
For nurses and midwives living in the UK who are overseas trained, the only 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 info on how to practice nursing in UK, you may the visit the following websites listed below.
http://www.rcn.org.uk/nursing/comingtouk/about-immigration-service/noneu_nurses
http://www.rcn.org.uk/nursing/comingtouk/adaptation
http://www.nmc-uk.org/aArticle.aspx?ArticleID=2566