Published Jul 24, 2010
Claret99
10 Posts
Hi - just joined here today and have a thread already.
I am just about to commence the process to become a RN in the USA.
However, the state in which I will eventually be applying states on the foreign nurse applicant section, that foreign nurses require TOFEL or equivelent to recieve a lisence in that state.
Does anyone know if English nurses educated in English are to comply with this or are we exempt?
Input would be appriciated:)
Silverdragon102, BSN
1 Article; 39,477 Posts
Usually exempt when trained in certain countries. Which state are you looking at?
New jersey
I would suggest you contact the BON via email or phone and check with them because usually if trained in the UK, Canada, Australia (to name a couple) and training was done completely in English then English exam is exempt. CES report should also indicate that your training was completely in English.
Just also wanted to ask. You are aware of retrogression and that it could take you several years waiting for a immigrant visa allowing you to live and work in the US?
Yes, I am aware if the retrogression. I have thought long and hard about the commitment and figured that it's best to be in the process than not at all.
Do you know how many visas certain countries are given each year?
I have not seen anything that lists how many visas are given to each country. If I was still going I had a PD of Aug 2006 and would still be in the UK waiting.
If the wait is this long, does ones GCFNS and lisence from a state board expire in this time?
License expiration will vary depending on state and if still working in the UK you should be OK to keep it up to date, just may need to do some CEU's (continual education units) and plenty has been written in the general nursing discussion forum regarding CEU's. CGFNS visa screen certificate has an expiration of 5 years but CES doesn't however account with CGFNS has 1 year to get things done. i.e if you start CES with CGFNS you have 12 months to get all relevant documents to them but on average you are looking at 4-6 months to get CES report issued
Thanks for that. You know so much about this area, I'm so glad you responded to my post.
When you said that there is a retrogression with visas is that for the EB3 or H1B visa. Or both?
H1b is a work visa and is not affected by retrogression but you need a BSN minimum (or relevant years experience) and generally need to be a specialised. Also for most H1b is capped and although last year and this year there are some left generally these vanish in hours and cover a lot of different areas like IT
EB3 is immigrant and is the category nurses generally come under
When providing documents for the CGFNS, are they only interested in pre registration academic work?
Do they take into account post registration diplomas and certificates?