ruthn

Are you in the UK? (You said 'trusts'). If so, then I think it's all regulated by NICE. They will assess the clinical evidence for the intervention, and then recommend whether/who it should be offered to. Trusts will generally make their decisions based on this guidance, although they're allowed to make exceptions. That was the whole issue with herceptin recently in the news. NICE was created in order to standardise treatment across the country, in the government consultation document 'a first class service' (1998ish?).

Not all training in the UK is three years, I am currently doing my training, and it's a two year post-graduate course. There's only a couple of these courses in the UK, and they are not well known. We will all graduate and register with the NMC in the same way as any other Diploma/Degree students. I don't know about the situation for overseas nurses though, but I think that the important aspect is the content, rather than the length of the course. And there you guys have an advantage over us, since we focus on branches (such as adult, mental health, children & learning disability) during the course, and can then only register to work with those client groups.