Moving from Ireland to US

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My Sister-In-Law is a pediatric nurse from Ireland who is hoping to relocate to the U.S.

She has over 20 years experience in Pediatrics/Disability nursing in Ireland, but I can't find any information about what kind of licensure she is eligible for here.

My understanding is that because she did not do general nursing studies, she is not qualified to sit for the RN boards. Surely their must be some way to get into nursing in the United States with her extensive pediatric experience.

Any information anyone can give me would be appreciated.

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Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.
My Sister-In-Law is a pediatric nurse from Ireland who is hoping to relocate to the U.S.

She has over 20 years experience in Pediatrics/Disability nursing in Ireland, but I can't find any information about what kind of licensure she is eligible for here.

My understanding is that because she did not do general nursing studies, she is not qualified to sit for the RN boards. Surely their must be some way to get into nursing in the United States with her extensive pediatric experience.

Any information anyone can give me would be appreciated.

I don't think there is any other way except as a RN All nurses in the US have to sit the NCLEX to which afterwards they can specialise. if she has only done paed course it will be extremely hard for her to get the OK from the BON. She could try and send her transcripts etc to cgfns for a CES report and see if she qualifies and if not what in and she may be able to take extra courses with an accredited school of nursing and make up the hours. This is currently a problem for UK nurses who have trained/training now for the last couple of years, there has been a couple of threads about this if you do a search in the international forum you may find some answers. Also Suzanne4 gives excellent advice and I am sure she will reply to this thread. Hope you can get something sorted :)

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As Anna said above, the US requires 'generalist' training, not specialist. This pertains to what she did when she was in school, not her work experience. In order to be able to sit for the US Boards (NCLEX exam), she will have to have her education approved by a Boar dof Nursing and get their authoriztion.

Best suggestion that I have is to have a review done by CGFNS.....that is actually the only way. And if she hasn't done anything yet, I suggest that she use NY for her initial licensure. But at this time only submit the Credentials Verification for NY..........this way they will evaluate and let her know.............otherwise, she can just make up the classes that she needs, it isn't the end of the world.

CGFNS website is http://www.cgfns.org. And it is the special credentials eval for NY, not any of the others.

Hope that this helps................. :)

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