Varda

I don't know if the rent has any hospital discount or affiliation, misswoosie. I got the rent price from the agency doing the recruitment, who will be setting the nurses they hired up. They've said the price would be 410 pounds/month, all inclusive - in two or three bedroom houses. I'm used to sharing and am actually going with a classmate, so such an arrangement like that is just fine. (410 per person, that is - if it was 410 for a three bedroom house, I'd wonder if the houses were actually in England. ) I'm hoping council tax and the tv license are included in the rental price. I've actually seen a few rooms advertised at 400 pounds/month, near the hospital, also all inclusive. But having things arranged through the agency is much simpler. Still don't know which area I'll be in exactly. The hospital had vacancies in Medicine, Surgery, Emergency and Theatre. I imagine I'll go to Medicine or Surgery as I'm a newly qualified nurse and, though I love emergency, starting at an A&E for a very busy hospital in a foreign country might be a bit above my level!

I've no means to compare, Silverdragon. I've made a prediction of my budget, based on the base salary (21146) minus the discounts, monthly rent (it should be all inclusive, so that's a plus); created a budget for grocery shopping (thank you online supermarkets, I feel we will become best friends), included NMC and RCN fees, alloted some money for transport (equivalent to a monthly pass for buses in the area), alloted money for a sports activities, and money for savings. The leftover isn't much, after all this. But I think it will be enough. It wouldn't be easy if I had to support anyone else, definately, so I see your point better now. Thanks for the input!

Thank you for your input, misswoosie. You bring up valid points - I have classmates who wouldn't consider going to a rural area an hour away from home if that was the only place they could get a job in. Can't say I understand the mentality, expecially when you're young, single and have a car, but I know it exists everywhere. I'm going to Broomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford, Mid-Essex. Just a stone's throw from London, so to speak, even though the train trips are quite expensive. Like I said, I haven't been there yet - never been to the east side of England at all. I barely know the UK (London, Southampton, Warwick/Coventry and the tiny village of Stanwick are most of the places I've been to) but from what I've seen online, it doesn't sound like a terrible area.

I'm going to the UK from Portugal as a newly qualified nurse, so it is possible. It just depends on where you want to go. If your idea is to go to a different EU country, there are still some that are in desperate need of nurses - France and Belgium come to mind right away. Of course, you'd need to know French to work in either (unless you know dutch, in whcih case you can work in Belgium too). Nothing like doing an Erasmus exchange to a foreign country to know how you would like to work there, though. It helps you also to understand how you deal with being away from home - family, friends and all the little things that may be completely different in another country. Good luck!

I've recently been interviewed and offered a job offer (Band 5, newly qualified) for a hospital. They had 70 positions available for Nurses. I'm Portuguese, the interviews took place in Portugal. Now, I know about the NHS restructuration, budget cuts and front-line staff losing their jobs and being relocated. I also know newly qualified nurses are having trouble finding a job - I questioned the recruitment agency as to how it is possible that they need to recruit from Portugal and other countries under these situations. They said that in the specific area of the hospital there are no Nursing Schools, and that Nurses, even newly qualified ones, try to get a job as close to home as possible. Fine, I can understand that family obligations and staying where you have a support network ready to help you out, are important factors in deciding whether to take a job or not. But if you don't have good prospectives in your area, do you really shun a position simply because it is further away? The area I'm going to is only 45 mins away from London by train. Rental prices are fair, compared to London and outskirts. I haven't actually been there yet, but it looks like a nice place with lots of countryside and a few lakes nearby. I can't believe that out of the many hundreds of newly qualified nurses this semester there aren't at least a few dozen who wouldn't mind moving to work in that area... Is it really like that? PS- I'm really grateful for the opportunity I've been given and excited about working in an NHS trust. I'm very fond of the UK, which is what made me apply for work there as opposed to some other countries where cost of living is lower and the wages are just as good. But this does make me curious. Any input would be appreciated!

Tax is higher, but look at the bright side - your retirement will be a bit better as well. Personally I wouldn't choose London as a city to go work in, since I find it extremely expensive in rent, transport and even food. Going out for a meal isn't as expensive as it used to be, from my point of view, but the city is at heart a business centre/tourist town, so it's always going to be more expensive than other places. Sharing a house with other people seems to be the best (the only, unless you're a milionair?) way to do things in London. Like SilverDragon said, council tax is divided by the people living in the same house (although this isn't an automatic thing, I think, you have to decide how to split it) as are the utility expenses (water, gas, electricity) and even the tv licensing fee. Yes, you have to pay a licence to have a television in the UK. Though most people I know don't have a tv in the places they live in (students sharing houses with other students). (I'm a portuguese nursing student, by the way, so if I said something terribly wrong, please correct me.)

Just my 2 cents, as nursing is a degree course in Portugal. It has been so since 1996, I believe. I don't know how it is in the UK exactly, but over here nurses still get paid less than their academic grade would require - something around 300eur/month less than other degree-holding professions - and it doens't look like that will change anytime soon. However if nursing wasn't even a degree course, I imagine things would be a lot worse!

Thank you, Silverdragon and MandaAnda. Aparently all I have to do is give the name of the uni/school to the international office of my uni, and they'll look into everything for me. I'm tempted to apply for King's College's Florence Nightingale school of nursing, but it's almost certain that they get the most requests from all over europe.. May be a bit hard. I also hear somewhere that british universities were accepting only professor mobility programs, and not student mobility programs (such as Erasmus, which is the european university students mobility program). I hope that's not the case. The alternative is going to Belgium, but my knowledge of french is quite dire (je ne parle pas français is about the only thing I can say anymore ) and I'd probably have to learn flemmish as well! In any case, I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best.

As a professor of mine used to say, "if advice was worth something, we'd be selling it instead of giving it". But still, I'll offer some advice anyway. It's all about attitude. If you spend the next days thinking about how much you're going to blush, and how hard everything is going to be, there's a high chance that those things WILL happen. If you tell yourself that you'll be fine, the chances that you'll be nervous are lower. There's nothing wrong with blushing when speaking in front of an audience. It's not the end of the world if you stammer a word or two, and I'm certain you will have studied the presentation carefully enough to know everything about it. If you are sure of yourself, things will go much smoother. So, intead of thinking about the negatives, study and think about the positives. Will you be teaching the audience something new? How much have you learnt from the research needed to go into this presentation? Be sure of yourself. You *can* do this. PS- I've heard some people suggesting you imagine the audience naked... Personally, that would make ME blush!

Would any of the posters know what universities/school in the UK are open about taking foreign (european) exchange students for a semester? I'm looking for options because I would like to do one semestre abroad, get in contact with a different culture, and english is a language I have some ease with - unlike french, for instance, or czech. However no one at my uni has gone on an exchange program to england, at least in the nursing course! Ours is a 4 year degree and I know there are quite a lot of differences already (I learnt how to do venipucture and start IV's on my first year, for instance, and after 4 years of uni training with placements every year in different clinical areas, we come out as generalist nurses) but I'd still like to try and go to the UK. Mainly because of the language and the fact that I have friends there, but also because england was the birthplace of Florence Nightingale, and what could be more symbolic than doing clinicals at the St. Thomas Hospital, for instance? :) If anyone can give suggestions of universities/schools who may be willing to accept exchange students, please let me know! :) Oh, I'm portuguese, studying at the Escola Superior de Enfermagem São João de Deus - University of Évora.

This really highlights the differences between UK nursing and nursing in portugal, where I'm from. Nurses don't all learn how to administer IV medication? They don't all go through pharmacology? The mind boggles. Medication errors ocurr regardless of the administration form. I'm sorry for the patient and their families, even though it's been so long. I've administered potassium, diluted in NaCl 0.9%, but never directly... Here as nursing students we have to ask our preceptor when we have doubts on how to administer a certain medication, and during the second year they tend to watch us like hawks at first... But mistakes and unexpected things can happen at anytime. There have been several medication errors done by student nurses, and they will continue to exist. Same with graduate nurses medication mistakes, really. That's how I view it, at least.

Greetings everyone, I am a portuguese nursing student thinking about taking advantage of the Erasmus exchange students program within europe. I spoke to the professor responsable for the program at my school, and asked her what she thought of doing a semestre in a UK university. The professor told me that in order for my university to consider it, I'd have to first submit the names of schools/universities I'd be interested in, and also a brief description of that school/university's program. There needs to be similarities between the study plans in order for the exchanged to be approved on my university's side, at least... That's where I found a small problem. UK nursing is based on a higher (university-level, I mean) education, just like the portuguese one. However, portuguese nursing degrees are 4 years long, and we come out of those 4 years with the title of Generalist Nurse. In the UK, it seems that things are slightly different. For one, the course is 3 years long, with only one common year. The other two years are specialized in an area of nursing care - Adult, Mental care, Pediatrics or Disabilities, if I'm not mistaken. I'm really unsure of how to conjugate this with the portuguese system. I believe that the easiest would be to consider exchanging to an Adult Nursing course, but I am unsure... I'll be doing the exchange on the last semestre of the course. My school's plans for that last semestre are completly clinical-practice-based, as far as I know. We are required to have clinical placements in a community-setting and in a specialty setting (this could be done in a health care centre for community, and I assume in any ward, but I could be mistaken). We had a community-based clinical placement in our first year of the course, whereas in the second year we had clinical practice in a general medical ward and in a surgical or specialty ward (I did mine in an ortophedy/surgical ward). During our third year we are placed in a pediathrics ward, as well as in a mental health service and in an obstetric ward/delivery room. So, as you can see, we go through a wide array of experiences in clinical practice, all of them backed up by a semestre (or more) of theory. I wouldn't feel comfortable going into Pediatrics nursing, however, as that is not something I wish to persue, and neither is Ob nursing or mental health nursing. So in this sense, Adult Nursing would make the msot sense for an exchange program. However, I'd liek to know what is generally required of final-year nurses in that branch? What techniques are they meant to implement? What level of supervision are they granted? Do any of you have experience with or as foreign exchange students? I'd love to hear experiences about it as well. :) Lastly, I'm still pondering all my options. If the study plans are incompatible, I'll look into other countries with which my uni already has deals - it's just that I'd really like to spend a semestre in england, as I am quite in love with the country (regardless of how expensive everything is over there). Thanks in advance for any input you might have. I hope the post is intelligible, and that I didn't ramble too much...