Opportunities in Nursing Abroad

[MathisDantes]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here, apologies if it's in the wrong place!

I was wanting to know if anyone had advise as far as aspiring to work abroad or in culturally diverse populations as a nurse.

To give some background on myself, I graduated as a double major in Psychology and International Relations in 2012. After doing so, I spent two years abroad teaching in Japan. Despite loving it (and missing it dearly), I chose to come back in order to further my education, with the intent of becoming a clinical psychologist with an emphasis in cultural psych. However, this year's rounds of applications have led me to reconsider this route: the job market is pretty bad right now and acceptance rates to funded PhD programs are at an all-time low. Most importantly however is the fact that, despite liking research, I more-so desire a position in which I'm involved in direct patient care. Coming from a nursing family, I know that becoming an RN is a great route for this. However, the one uncertainty which I find crucial to being happy with my work is the desire to be in a workplace which emulates that of the one I had in Japan: diverse individuals from a variety of different cultures working towards a common goal with equally as diverse clients. With this in mind, does anyone have any advice they could offer me? I've found Trans-Cultural Nursing to be very attractive, but beyond the certification and interesting journals I've read I'm not sure how it translates into the real world.

Thank you for the help!

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

Not sure about foreign countries licensing US nurses, but you could always go the military route and avoid that issue...

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

If you want to work in another nation - with that population rather than a community of American Expats - you'd have to meet all the license & practice requirement of that nation. Although I believe that the EU has pretty much standardized to facilitate nursing mobility, that process is limited to EU member nations. HERE is a nice summary/comparison of pre-licensure nursing educational requirements & a list of resources for English-speaking countries. Of course, you'd also need to be fluent in the local language in order to actually practice nursing in that locale - that's a requirement to obtain licensure.

In a recent conversation with a colleague who (I believe) is well-informed, he indicated that US military hospitals employ 'civilian' nurses in many locations around the world. I suppose it would be via some type of civil service agreement similar to the VA. You may want to investigate that as well.

Best of luck on your career decision.

[MathisDantes]

Thank you so much for that link! It helped tremendously.