Soon to be new grad looking for advice

[hyena, ASN]

Hello there! I'm not too sure where to turn, so I was hoping I'd find some advice here. I posted this in the nursing Subreddit, but thought I'd post it here too since I realized this might be a more topical place to post it.

Here's my situation. I'm going to be graduating in April, and I need to be thinking about where I'm going to work. I'm caught between two options here. For background, I'm planning on moving to the UK after I get a year's experience (currently in America), and once I'm there, I plan to work in critical care or at least adult nursing. I know the nursing scene is way different in the UK and I'll get paid less, but I'm moving there because people very important to me are there. I'm willing to make sacrifices for it.

But I want to spend some time working and saving money before I move and while my UK nursing application gets processed. I'm not sure whether I should work where I'm working now or on a critical care unit in a hospital.

I currently work in a primary care clinic, where I get better pay & benefits than I would at the hospitals where I currently live, and really enjoy the patients, my coworkers, and my environment overall where I am. I've worked here for a year and a half, and they've said they'd be happy to have me as an RN. I'd be able to save more money for my move, and would really, really enjoy it there.

But as someone who's considering working in the UK, I'm wondering if ICU would look better to a recruiter in the UK or if I'd get better experience. At the same time, I know that once you pass the NMC nursing process, they pretty much train you from scratch anyway so I don't know if the kind of experience I have would even matter since the NMC doesn't require former experience to apply anymore and I'd be treated as a new grad nurse once I got over there for orientation anyways.

I'm also wondering if I could stay where I'm working and then pick up as-needed shifts on critical care at the hospital or something so I could get experience with both? I don't know if that's possible, but if anyone knows anything about that, I'm all ears.

I just really want the experience to become the best nurse I can be. Where I'm working has a big piece of my heart, but I'm willing to work somewhere else once I graduate if it'll give me better new grad experience and better my chances to grab a job in the UK.

I really appreciate any answers I will get; I'm getting conflicting answers in real life and I wanted to hear some unbiased opinions. Please be gentle haha- I'm a little nervous about all of this!

[Needlestick007]

Hi there,

I’m actually in the opposite situation - currently getting my BSN in the UK and planning to move back to the U.S. once my RN license gets processed (ideally in Alaska but not sure how successful I’ll be getting a new grad position there). Where in the UK do you intend to live? Many NHS trusts have ICU programs for new grads - they’ll likely start you out in a MS unit for a year and you’ll get enrolled in a certification program for new ICU nurses. Most hospitals here won’t hire new grads into ICUs directly without previous floor experience. So I believe that ICU experience would make you stand out compared to UK new grads. I recently spoke to a US trained RN working here and she said that the license transfer timeline was almost a year at the moment, so just be aware of that. But at least it would give you a plenty of time to practice some skills before making the switch and then you can just focus on learning about the US vs UK differences instead of battling with the basics. Let me know if you have any questions.