babystea

sounds great, nadine, thanks!

I'm married to an American and actually have a social security number (lived in US for 9 years). I had to give up my green card because I'd been out of the US too long to meet residency requirements (due to studying nursing in the UK) but will be able to re-apply through my husband, so immigration shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Hi there, so after a couple of days trawling the forums, I think I'm beginning to get an tiny idea of what this whole process is about. Not easy at all, is it?! I'm really hoping that someone can help verify if I'm on the right track. Here's my understanding so far..... The UK degree is more specialised than the US degree meaning that clinical and theoretical hours need to be made up in order to meet requirements to sit the NCLEX-RN. These requirements are set by the BON of each state and it is only when you have met the academic requirements that you will be given permission by a state to take the NCLEX-RN test. Right so far? Questions: 1) are the requirements for each state’s BON pretty similar? I have the breakdown for Vermont (taken from their website), which is as follows…. Adult Nursing: theory 75hrs, clinical 200hrs Maternal/infant nursing: theory 30hrs, clinical 40 hrs Paeds: theory 30hrs, clinical 40 hrs Psych/mental health: theory 30, clinical 40 A&P (including lab): 80hrs Microbiology (including lab): 40 hrs Humanities: 40hrs Social and behavioural sciences: 40 hrs 2) is it a question of writing to each state’s BON to try and get the breakdown of hours required? Does anyone one know which state's required hours correlate most closely with a UK degree (i.e with one year of common foundation programme and 2 years adult nursing branch)? In other words, are there any states which are 'easier' (for want of a better word) for UK graduates to apply to? Once I have established this, I guess the only way to actually find out SPECIFICALLY how my hours compare (and thereby discover exactly which areas I need to cover and how many hours) is to bite the bullet, pay CGFNS the $335 to get my transcript sent and translated to the BON I choose. Off the top of my head, I’m guessing that I will definitely have to make up hours in paeds, however, I’m not sure if what we did at uni in terms of mental health/learning disability, and health visiting modules would count towards the psych requirement and maternal/infant nursing requirement. I guess it’s all a matter of how our UK transcripts are translated, isn’t it? E.g my uni tells me that we didn’t do microbiology, and therefore it wouldn’t appear on my UK transcript. However my (American) husband looked at the course content and said that parts of what we studied in A&P were microbiology as they would define it in the U.S. There’s no point in guessing, is there, really? So, I think it’d prob just be better to pay CGFNS at this stage, right? A few questions on this: a) Do we only need to have details of the nursing degree sent via CGFNS to the BON? Are you supposed to include anything from high school? What about previous degrees? I have a BA from another university, which may help cover the “humanities” requirement and studied A&P at an accredited massage therapy school in NYC in the 90's, which may help me out with the microbiology part….how many sources can you put on the CES form? I think it might be 2, but what happens if you have a few sources of education from which to draw? Also, am I right in thinking that I can have the credentials sent to two different BONs? b) Will the 2 BONs I have the information sent to, then contact me and inform me exactly what I’m missing or would I need to pay the extra $75 to CGFNS for a duplicate copy of each? Does this process really take upwards of 6 months? ( I've seen a few reports on the forums that CGFNS are kind of unreliable but they seem to be the one credentialing agency that the BONs prefer, is that right?) c) Once I have established exactly what I’m missing, would I then start looking for ways to make these theoretical and clinical hours up? d) Has anyone out there found a way to do this in the UK? I've had a few false starts on this....looks like a few years ago Brighton Uni ran some kind of make-up course but this is no longer running. Looks like the problem might be in getting the accredited clinical hours. Anyone heard of a current solution to this? e) Alternatively, have any Brits found a way to make up hours in the USA? I’ve seen on the forums here that people talk about being a ‘guest student’ and being able to do individual modules to cover the shortfall in hours…..anyone actually got any first hand experience or knowledge about this? Am I right in thinking that such modules would have to be gained through a university nursing programme due to the supervised clinical components required, not through, for example, a community college? If/when I ever do get the hours made up, do I then re-apply to CGFNS and get them to send the updated info to the BONs (I guess this has to be done within a year as a “Professional Report Reprocess Application”in order to pay only $150 instead of making an entirely new application)? If the BON / CGFNS tells me I that I do meet the requirements, do I then have to apply to take the NCLEX first, followed by an application to the BON for PTT or do I apply for PTT from the BON before applying to NCLEX? Ok, so I know that's all probably as clear as mud, but if any of you can verify that I'm on the right track here, I'd really appreciate it. I really don't want to set off down the wrong path and waste money and, more importantly, valuable time, seeing as this process will probably be torturously long and terrifyingly expensive already, lol! Thanks a million!

hey there maria212, thank you SO much for replying so quicky! this whole thing is a bit of a nightmare, isn't it? i had no idea it would be so difficult. i'm just about to post a (long/confusing/boring) new thread on the international forum (am still working out the whole forums/threads thing, :)) with some specific questions that i hope someone can help me out with. the whole process just seems so terribly unclear, i want to try and get it straight in my own head before making a start on it (specifically, before i start PAYING for stuff like transcripts etc!). can we try and keep in touch about this stuff maria212? i haven't enough posts to PM yet but i'm going to be checking in on allnurses alot in the oncoming months. a tiny bit of background....i graduated in 2009 so have a couple of years experience and have the added bonus (!) of having an american husband so at least i hopefully shouldn't have the added stress of the whole visa thing, thank god. when i started the BSc in nursing, it was always my intention to move back to the US after a few years of paying my dues into the NHS but i truly had no idea that our degrees would be structured so differently from american degrees as to create quite so many barriers to working in the US. i'm going to contact my uni today to see if they can help me out with information on stand alone modules that would contribute towards the requirements to sit NCLEX. will let you know what i come up with. if you get any joy from RCN or NMC, let me know! thanks again!

are any of you girls still communicating about how to make up hours in theory and practice to move to the US with a BSC from the UK? Maria 212, Nads21, nursecubanita, i can't PM yet, if any of you can help me out, please post! thanks!

Hi all, I'm hoping someone can help me out; I graduated from a UK university with BSc in Nursing Sciences in 2009 (structured as 1 year foundation/general nursing followed by 2 years in adult nursing....I think this is the way most UK nursing degrees are structured) and have been working in surgical wards in the NHS since, giving me 2 years experience. I lived in CA for 9 years before coming back to the UK for nursing training and although I had to give up my green card, I still have my SS number and my husband is American, so I don't think the visa/immigration part will be too much of an issue. I've started making preliminary inquiries here in the UK about meeting requirements to get authorization to take the NCLEX and have been sent a breakdown of hours required by the VT BON. It would appear that the nursing degrees in the US are more general than in the UK and contain elements that we would pursue as a specialty here, such as paediatric nursing, mental health nursing etc. I'm wondering if anybody out there has recently moved from the UK to the USA and could give me some advice about how they went through the process? In particular, how does one find out exactly which components are "missing" from the UK degree and how does one address meeting the theoretical and clinical practice requirements in something like, say, paediatrics or mental health to an acceptable standard? I've googled the life out of this subject and just can't seem to find clear information about it, I feel like I'm hitting a brick wall before I've even started so any help/direction/useful links would be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much!