Ongoing frustrations with NMC - please help

[manchesterdoc]

Hi everyone,

I would really appreciate some help from those here who've gone through the NMC's ridiculous route of getting registration in the UK as an overseas nurse. I would have written this in the other topic on the assessment stage but that's mainly taken up with OSCE revision planning now.

Im not actually a nurse myself but my fiancée is - she's pretty much giving up on the whole thing such is her frustration which is understandable, but I can't believe with the shortage of nurses in this country that it won't be possible for her.

She is an Australian nurse, born, educated and trained there, qualified around five or six years ago and has been a clinical nurse educator there prior to coming here to the UK because of me. She has been trying with this application for well over a year. She's not applying through an agency.

The NMC have been staggeringly incompetent in their dealings. She has done the IELTS and the MCQ exam and submitted paperwork to the NMC. After multiple delays on their side the assessment period started three weeks ago.

Last week she was told her application can't proceed without her primary school certificate. Not her degree, not her high school certificate both of which she has. Her primary school certificate - in Australia they apparently don't even give those out. And what relevance is that anyway?!

In addition, due to her references now being older than 3 months due to the various delays from NMC she has to resend for those again from Australia - despite them being from the same period of time (she last worked as a nurse in May 2014). They will literally be carbon copies with a different date. Same with her police check.

Also the idiots managed to lose her certificate of good standing so she has to fork out another $60 from AHPRA for that too.

There's also a requirement to do obstetric nursing apparently which she didn't do as part of her degree course (pretty reasonably as she did nursing not midwifery), which they haven't picked on yet but she's worried they will do.

So if anyone could help us on a few things:

1. If the NMC managed this much idiocy on her application, surely they managed them on others. What's the best way round it? Does speaking to someone senior help? Some things here make absolutely no sense and particularly the primary school leaving thing should be solved with some common sense, but then each time she calls she speaks to the junior pen pushers who likely don't have much of a clue.

2. Has anyone else experienced this primary school leaving certificate rubbish? Surely plenty of people don't have those?

3. Can she authorise me to speak to the NMC on her behalf? As much as I love her we both have our strengths and weaknesses, and not dropping the phone til I get a positive answer is more my strength than hers.

4. Has anyone made it through to the OSCE without having done a module in women's health/obstetrics? How did you get round it? Or did the NMC just not comment on it?

5. For those of you who have lived in the UK while doing this application, what police check did you use? DBS checks need to be requested by the employer. She already has one from Australia

6. How do you solve the problem of documents running out of time, waiting for more documents and then the replacements running out?

This is so incredibly frustrating and really any additional pointers would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Welcome to NMC and like a few other nursing organisations a round the world it will not get any easier.

I would suggest talking to someone higher up or even if you can go into their offices in London and try to speak to someone

[manchesterdoc]

Welcome to NMC and like a few other nursing organisations a round the world it will not get any easier.

I would suggest talking to someone higher up or even if you can go into their offices in London and try to speak to someone

Hi, thanks for the reply. Unfortunately we live up in Manchester and though we've looked into going into the NMC in person, it would involve an overnight in London as they only accept face to face meetings in the morning apparently.

However having said that, have you or anyone else had similar experiences in the past where a face to face meeting has worked when phone conversations have been this frustrating? Might be worth looking into if so.

Also, if anyone knows the job titles of the people we should be asking for over the phone re who makes the decisions on these things (as opposed to the lackeys who answer the phone) that would be very much appreciated.

[Aelwen]

Hi, my partner and I just stumbled across this because of pretty similar problems that I've been having trying to get registered with the NMC as well. Unbelievably frustrating. Given the age of the post, I was wondering if you and your fiance ever worked out a solution? We are considering filing a formal complaint at this point.