Trained outside Europe

Information for nurses and midwives who trained outside of the EU or EEA countries

  • If you request an application pack and submit the pack to us, the NMC will charge a £140 evalution fee.
  • This fee has been set at £140, and has been calculated to cover the administration costs of the application process.

If you are thinking of applying to be a nurse or midwife in the UK, read the following information.

To apply for registration with us, you must first be registered in the country you trained in, and you must have at least 12 months of registered practice in the field of nursing or midwifery for which you want to apply. You must also meet our English language requirements, with an international English language test (IELTS) score of 7.0. You should be aware that you will, separately, be required to meet the full requirements of the UK’s immigration processes.

On completion of the initial application process, a full application pack will be sent to you for completion. When you receive the full application pack, the forms must be completed and returned by post to the contact address indicated.

Information for nurses

Please check that your training in your home country matches our requirements. These are that you should have completed a three year full time course or a course totalling 4600 hours at post secondary level leading to registration as a general nurse. At least half of this course, 2,300 hours, must be in clinical or practical training, and at least one third, 1,533 hours, must be theoretical training.

The course must include theoretical and practical instruction in general and specialist medicine, general and specialist surgery, childcare and paediatrics, maternity (obstetric) care, mental health and psychiatry, care of the elderly, community or primary care nursing.

If you trained in the USA and have an associate in science degree in nursing (ASDN) that was below three full time years in length, you will not meet our requirements for registration. We will consider your application if your programme was three full time years or more, and if you undertook a bachelor of science degree in nursing (BSN). 

If your application meets our minimum standards, you will have to complete an overseas nursing programme. The programme sets out common entry standards, a compulsory 20-day period of protected learning and, where appropriate, a period of supervised practice. We strongly recommend that you secure your place on a programme before travelling to the UK.

Information for midwives

If your application had met our minimum standards, you would have been required to complete one of these programmes.

There is currently only one approved midwifery adaptation course running in the UK, from Kingston University at St George's Hospital, Tooting, London. More information on this course.

You cannot work as a midwife in the United Kingdom without completing this programme. Please use the link below to keep up to date with current availability.

Created date :
04/03/2010
Modified date :
04/03/2010