agency nurse applying for work in Australia

[nursey2008]

Hello,

my name is nicola (german trained nurse, qualified a year ago) and i have been working in ireland for 7 months now. 5 of these months I spent working in a nursing home and for 2 months I've been doing agency nursing most of the time in one and the same hospital.

I wish to apply for immigration to australia asap but heard from different sources that I need at least 1 year acute hospital experience before I can apply.

Now I am wondering to what extend agency nursing would be recognized as acute hospital experience. I am working (as agency nurse) in a private hospital and work on med/surg wards

I heard that there might be difficulties regarding reference letters when Im applying for work in Australia as the hospital I'm doing agency nursing for can't give me a reference letter on headed paper. My agency would give me a reference but at the same time they are "just" an agency.

Are there any nurses among you who can help me to answer this question?

Thanks v much

[pie_face]

As long as you have registration in oz, and can scrape together a couple of professional references you should have little trouble finding a job, either with an agency or directly through a hospital. I walk past the vacancy board every day on my way to work, there are always pages and pages of jobs.

[nursey2008]

thanks very much for ur reply.

The only kind of reference id get would either be character references from CNMs without headed paper or from my agency. This is the only hospital experience I have. Now I might be able to go into a fulltimejob but this would mean a huge amount less money as I'm starting off at the bottom of the salary list so id have some difficult times ahead as I have to pay rent and everything and Ireland is extremely expensive to live in.

Therefor I thought if I continue agency nursing it might be a good way to collect experience.

[pie_face]

I think you might be worrying too much about the reference issue, as long as you get two people, if you're a very recent grad it could be a tutor or clinical supervisor, and your current employer, you should have no problems.

Think of it this way, if you have an aussie registration, have been succesful at interview and offered a post, passed your police checks and medical for your visa, do you think it likely that your potential employer will revoke the offer of a job because the reference is not on headed notepaper?