Nursing in the U.K.?

Silverdragon102, BSN · Jan 23, 2017

Where are you now? Are you a U.K. Citizen? Getting to do your training in the UK if not a citizen or permanent resident can be difficult as well as expensive. Check out RCN pay scale for 2017/8 and look for band 5 as that is the starting point for a nurse newly trained

BedsideNurse · Jan 30, 2017

First, just an FYI, (that you assuredly already know, but just in case), the UK doesn't just let anyone come over to work; you have to apply for a work VISA and when I was there, hospitals had to sponsor foreign nurses (prove they couldn't find a British nurse, to keep nurses overseas nurses from taking jobs from citizens there). So, it is a bit of process, and it's *really* hard and expensive to get a U.S. RN license transferred over to work in UK, and it's quite the task in reverse, so I'd figure out where you wanted to work and stay for a while because you can't easily just work one place or the other. All that aside, the pay for nurses there is abhorrent. You can make more non benefit agency, but staff nurses top pay is generally 15 pounds an hour, often 11, 12 13. Maybe in the city if you are in a specialized field and have loads of experience, you might be offered 20 something, but that's typically agency and no paid vacation time, etc.. Fifteen pounds spends about like 15 dollars in the U.S., outside of housing, which I would say is more expensive there, in general, and gas is 7 bucks a gallon or so. Patient ratios on floors tend to be higher, from what my English friends told me, except in ICU, which I think tend to be better than ours, if I remember correctly (often 1:1). Nursing is a whole different monster over there. If you are your only income you will living in a run down flat on nurse pay. It's the NHS. Even physician pay is pretty crappy. Not really comparable compensation wise to the U.S.

mdurgut · Jan 31, 2017

A nurse can make Â£17 an hour with agency. Depends on job offer. Â£34000 a year with disability assessor work. Please note any company you work for, if there policy is to refuse references and so refuse to fill in the BNMC reference form you will be refused a license....in the uk and years of hard work will end in tears.