US Citizen: wants to be educated in Australia

[JayH]

Hey there,

My name is Jay.

I am from the northwestern United States.

I am wanting to go to school for my bachelors of nursing in Australia.

I was wondering about the acceptance rates of schools there as well as if there is anything else I should think about as an international student.

I was planning on taking a trip to Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney in May to see the schools and just take a vacation in general.

I've been working in Corrections Health for two years and before was already excited about the aspects of nursing and it has simply made me know beyond a doubt it is what I'd like to do.

Thanks for any help at all!

Thanks!

Jay

[pie_face]

Mate if there is any possible way to study in the US then do it, your tuition fees here will be $30,000+, then everything else on top, and honestly you may find that the training is better at home, the average Aus nursing student gets very limited clinical practice, I've worked with students getting 9 weeks total in four years, not very good at all! Also it has to be said, all the guys from the US that I have worked with out here have all gone home again, that has to tell you something!

[nyapa, RN]

Lets try and answer this:

Australia is desperate for nurses. There is no doubt about that. We have people who come from some countries, mainly Commonwealth ones, whose qualifications are almost automatically recognised. We want you so please please come BUT...

Others, who may have just as good education, are not recognised, and have to do a 'top up' type course. Americans are among them. I work with alot of ONCAP nurses here. They come from India, the Phillipines and Indonesia. I find their knowledge extremely good - the Indian nurses are like walking encyclopaedias when it comes to medication, and the Indonesians are very calm and efficient. As I understand it, the Phillipine nurses can sit NCLEX and be automatically accepted in the US?

There is quota for International Students in each university. It would be best to enquire to the ones you may be interested in. Also, check out the Australian Immigration Site:

http://www.immi.gov.au/index.htm

Many have already told you that the training here is different from that in the US. I have a Bachelor of Nursing, and I know it is not recognised there.

I suggest you look at the reasons why you want to do your training. If you want to:

• stay in Australia permanently, then do it, we want you!
  
• eventually go back to the US, you may need to reconsider, because of their requirements. It may be disadvantageous to you in the long run.
  

Unfortunately all countries, Australia and America included, do not help matters; they make it harder and harder for overseas nurses to work in their borders. I personally believe that a nurse should be assessed on their skills, not just be made to do a mandatory catchup programme. Just another reason for the world to lose nurses...

[nyapa, RN]

Mate if there is any possible way to study in the US then do it, your tuition fees here will be $30,000+, then everything else on top, and honestly you may find that the training is better at home, the average Aus nursing student gets very limited clinical practice, I've worked with students getting 9 weeks total in four years, not very good at all! Also it has to be said, all the guys from the US that I have worked with out here have all gone home again, that has to tell you something!

9 weeks total in four years?

Our course is a three year course.

Unless this person did their course part time, then I find this a bit confusing. Even then, 9 weeks seems a little poor. Where did they do their training?

I actually did 20 weeks Practiuum in the hospital. That adds up to 1/6 of the course (we are not at the uni 52 weeks a year!) and it does not include the inhouse clinical blocks on top.

[nyapa, RN]

Jay,

Just found this pamphlet at the Australian Nurses Federation website while I was trying to find something else.

I hope it helps

http://www.anf.org.au/anf_pdf/Nursing_Australia.pdf

[pie_face]

9 weeks total in four years?

Our course is a three year course.

Unless this person did their course part time, then I find this a bit confusing. Even then, 9 weeks seems a little poor. Where did they do their training?

I actually did 20 weeks Practiuum in the hospital. That adds up to 1/6 of the course (we are not at the uni 52 weeks a year!) and it does not include the inhouse clinical blocks on top.

I believe the student in question had stayed on to do honours thus I included the extra year. However it is also possible to do a masters in two years and gain registration, if you already have a first degree. So not all courses are three years.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between practicum and in house clinical blocks, are they both compulsory and a requirement for graduation? The figure of nine weeks came from a colleague I think from WA.

It must be a cultural thing, I trained in a country where the training was split 50/50, our final three placements were 16 weeks each, so even your 20 weeks seem 'light' to my narrow mind. By the way I am not suggesting any lack in quality of the home made staff I have worked with here in Oz, however as has been pointed out there are a lot of nurse shortages and this makes giving students a quality experience during their short placements difficult. It also can make it difficult for new grads to get jobs due to lack of experienced mentors, this was widely reported only recently with a large number of new grads being unemployed. It sometimes seems to me as a relativley new arrival that the nurses here are excellent in spite of, not because of the 'system'.

[elmar22]

the average Aus nursing student gets very limited clinical practice, I've worked with students getting 9 weeks total in four years, not very good at all!

I believe the above statement is quite unfair. I got my three-year Bachelor of Nursing in Australia. When my TOR was assessed in Vermont for approval to sit the NCLEX (I passed the exam March last year), all the necessary theoretical and clinical requirements of the required subjects were either exceeded or met except Obstetrics (40 hrs short) and Paediatrics (35 hrs short). However, the number of clinical hours I accumulated in my especialty subject (Medical-Surgical) was five times that of what was required in the US. Over-all, I can say that the clinical hours of the Australian Nursing curriculum is comparable to that of of the American system. The main diffrence is the allocation of clinical hours in different subjects. This is because the American nursing students follow the generalised Nursing curriculum while Australian students follow the especialist Nursing curriculum.

[ghillbert, MSN, NP]

I agree - I did a 3 yr bachelor of nursing in Australia and met the theory and clinical requirements for licensure eligibility in the US - even in paeds and maternity. Of course, I did it over 10 years ago so the course makeup has changed.

[pie_face]

As previously stated I am relaying information gained from colleagues and students I have worked with over the past three years, the most common grumble is too much time in school not enough time in practice. If you disagree then I'm happy for you, but I think you must conceed that not everyone will share your wholey postive experience, and I think it wrong to imply that an Aus bn is a good preparation for practice in the US when you both, in differant ways have said it's not.

The point of this post is not to comment on the quality of the training but on it's ease of transition to the US, should the original poster find himself heading home after training, or part way through if he splits from his girlfriend. As such I stand by my original post.

[suzanne4, RN]

The Bachelors in Nursing that is obtained in Australia is not equated over here with being the same as the four year BSN since it is only a three year program.

The number of clinical and theory hours can be completed in the two year programs over here, all require that the same hours be done, and then time is spent in other areas, as well as meeting the university requirements for graduation with a BSN. Hours in other areas, such as language, humanities, government, etc., are also required here for the BSN.

-----------------------------

Now to get back to the topic that was being asked:

Immigration and licensure are two very different things no matter which country that you go to. And even if you hold a US passport, you will be considered a foreign grad when it comes to licensure in any state in the US, with additional requirements that need to be met.

When you go to another country to attend school, you will be paying the full fee for it, as well as any addtional fees that they have. Taxes support these schools and since you will not have paid any taxes to them, you get hit with the full amount.

This is actually the same thing that happens when a foreign student comes to the US to train, there tuition is about three times the cost of what a local would pay and they need to show proof that they can pay their expenses before they will get a student visa issued to them.

[elmar22]

The Bachelors in Nursing that is obtained in Australia is not equated over here with being the same as the four year BSN since it is only a three year program.

I believe the OP should also be informed why Bachelor of Nursing is only three years in Australia. This is because subjects like Language, Government, Chemistry, Mathematics, Religion, etc are not in the Australian Nursing curriculum. In Australia, these courses are assumed to have been learned in High School. In other words, Australian nursing students are taught ALL Nursing subjects right from first year until graduation (i.e. students don't waste their time and money with "nuisance" subjects). I know of another country whose 4-yr BSN curriculum is readily accepted in the US but their first year subjects consist of just one or no "real" Nursing course at all!

[suzanne4, RN]

The two year ADN program that is in the US also meets the requirements for licensure in all 50 states here; but it is not the BSN and does not contain all of the other extra things.

There are differences between the two and that is what I was trying to point out and that the degree in Australia is not accepted as the BSN here in the US. Nothing more than that.

And if the US, we have to take the other classes when we are in high school before we can even graduate from there. The government here also requires additional credits in those subjects to make a "well-rounded_ graduate, no matter what their specialty, other than nursing.