[carahafner]

Hi there,

I am a US RN with my NZ registration and I am finding myself a bit confused by some of the lingo of the New Zealand Nursing Council and thought maybe one of you could help.

I was reading about the changes they made in 2003-2004 around the scope of practice for RNs in NZ and while they seemed to be trying to eliminate all the separate categories of nurses (ie mental health nurses, obstetric nurses), they still appear to place provisions on some registered nurses after they apply for registration.

What is the difference between a Registered Comprehensive Nurse and a Registered General Nurse? Do they tend to only do overseas applicants as Registered General Nurses? What does this mean in terms of applying for jobs? Does it make any difference? I thought an RN was an RN once you were registered with the council???

Thanks for your help.

Cara

[ljrobin]

Cara,
I have a couple of questions for you regarding the US documents needed for the Nursing Council.
It seems to be taking forever for the State Department to provide verification of my passport. How long did it take for your passport verification?
Out of curiosity how did you go about getting the verification?
I was a nurse in WA state, and have written to the Department of Health Licensing Division as I was advised to obtain verification for my license. How long did it take you for this process? Your method?
It just seems to be taking ages. I sent for all these documents in November 2008.
Thanks in advance. You can PM if you like.
Laurie

[bob_the_engineer]

digging into my memory from what a friend told me I think one did one year less in education and had to be supervised for some tasks RGN RCN. i understand it was a way of getting onto the wards quicker and earning some money,then they would complete some more education and convert.

as I said this is a vague memory but i hope its helpful

Bob

[carahafner]

Hi Laurie,

I am not sure what you mean by "passport verification"? Do you mean that you applied for a passport? if so, I am not sure what the wait time is on those..it seemed to only take about a month when we got passports for our kiddos last summer.

I sent in a "Certified" copy of my passport when I applied to the nursing council. This means that I just took my passport to Kinkos and a notary signed that it was truly a copy of my passport. Did this for $5. This is all you need to do for immigration paperwork as well once you get to that point.

Did you send the form from the application packet for your state board of nursing to sign? I live in Oregon and I just sent the verification with a fee (I think it was $10 for them to fill it out and put their stamp on it) and they had it back to me in a week. I did call ahead to find out who to send it to directly and that is when I found out about their fee. I would definitely follow up with them and find out what is going on.

Let me know if you have any more questions...I am happy to help.

Cara

[carahafner]

digging into my memory from what a friend told me I think one did one year less in education and had to be supervised for some tasks RGN RCN. i understand it was a way of getting onto the wards quicker and earning some money,then they would complete some more education and convert.

as I said this is a vague memory but i hope its helpful

Bob

I think what you are referring to is "enrolled nurse" vs "registered nurse."

Someone else told me that the difference has to do with when you got your education. It appears that all nurses graduating from nursing schools in NZ are now RCNs whereas if you graduated, say, 10 years ago, you were an RGN?

Hmm, all very interesting. Would love to hear from others. And if there is such a difference, does it affect what kind of jobs you can get? There does not seem to be any distinction when looking at job advertisements. They ask for Registered Nurses with only specifics around work experience.

Cara

[Tomsk]

Sorry, I'm quite clearly not going to be a lt of help as I hadn't even realised that there was a RCN category (how the heck did I miss that...I thought I'd read that entire web site a dozen times in my wait to register with NCNZ :o ). Anyway I was a RGN with quite a few years experience in the UK, submitted all the forms and they registered me as an RGN in NZ. It was all a fairly straightforward, just took a long time. Since I arrived over here my registration was accepted without any problems. I didn't have a job offer before I arrived as my hubby was the lead applicant and I wanted some time off to settle children into school etc before I started work. That said, as soon as I started job hunting I was able to apply for whichever jobs appealed to me, and I landed a great one that made use of my previous skills & experience.
So I don't think that the RGN/ RCN qualification places any limitation as to what jobs you can apply for, providing that you have the skill base required for that particular role. But maybe someone else out there will know more than me.

[carahafner]

Thanks for the reply.

The nursing council makes things as clear as mud as far as I can tell:wah

Anyway, it seemed to me that this was the case but I did not want to assume anything before applying for jobs and making my way over to NZ.

Where are you located and what kind of nursing do you do?

Cara

[snailandthewhale]

I think the difference is some nurses from US, phillipines etc do everything, adult, paeds, psych and midwifery and are comprehensive.

I trained in the UK and am only allowed to work in general nursing, although we spent time in paeds, midwifery and psych, I'm an RGN, whereas some of my colleagues can do it all.

In the UK nurses and midwives are different and other countries you're just a nurse who specialises in obs & gyn.

I think it's something like that.

[Hagabel]

Cara,
I have a couple of questions for you regarding the US documents needed for the Nursing Council.
It seems to be taking forever for the State Department to provide verification of my passport. How long did it take for your passport verification?
Out of curiosity how did you go about getting the verification?
I was a nurse in WA state, and have written to the Department of Health Licensing Division as I was advised to obtain verification for my license. How long did it take you for this process? Your method?
It just seems to be taking ages. I sent for all these documents in November 200
Laurie

Hi there,
I am a UK trained RGN living and working in WA state and just got my nurse reg approved in NZ in Jan 09. It has been a long frustrating process. However the WA DoH was really fast in verifying my eligibility to practice as an RN in WA, cashed my check within a few days and sent off the info to NZ with 1-2 weeks. I would recontact them to see if the forms got waylaid.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
How are you finding NZ after the PNW?
I am living approx 1 hr north of Seattle.
:)

[ljrobin]

This is a question for nurses from the US with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing. This is a quote from the person at the Nursing Council:
"We also need a transcript with details of your Clinical placements and hours done for each subject. I suggest you contact the Regulatory Authority of Minnesota where you were first registered and ask them to provide a Syllabus and full transcript for your nursing programme."
The school I attended has sent in my transcript, with course descriptions, but it seems this is not enough. The College closed in 1989, which is making this much more difficult.
I am wondering what others have sent in as far as the course descriptions and clinical hours. This is not information that I have not saved.
Goodness, I have been working as a registered nurse for over 20 years. How much do they really want nurses?! It's just really frustrating. This process has been ongoing since November 2008.
Any advice is gladly accepted.

[carahafner]

Hi there,

Well, this is yet another example of the Nursing Council at its worst. :wah

They wanted clarification on my clinical hours and I contacted my nursing school and the response from my contact there was "I already sent this information but sure...I'll send it again". My school listed each of the areas of clinical placement and the number of hours in each area. The second time did the trick. I am not sure what my nursing school sent in as far as course descriptions since that stuff was sent in on the front end of my application but I know that the clinical placement and hours total in each area was listed simply and to the point and the council accepted it. Basically, what it sounds like you need is a list of the type of clinical placement you had in nursing school (med-surg, psych, child ,family, primary care, obstetrics,etc) and the number of hours in each area. Try getting that info if you can. Even though the school has closed, it seems that whoever is responsible for the info on students from your nursing school would be able to provide the more detailed clinical hour information if they were able to send a transcript?

What I don't get is that in order to sit for our (US) national board exam , you have to have met a minimum requirement to do so. To earn a Bachelor's degree in nursing, you also must meet a minimum requirement as set by national standards. Isn't there any way to direct the Nursing Council to these standards so that they can make this process more smooth for US applicants?

It also turns out that most US BSN applicants are given a NZ RN with a limit on scope of practice to only practice in general nursing. This doesn't seem to be a big deal when applying for most jobs but you should just be aware of this.

Hang in there. It took me about 5 months from start to finish to get my registration. This is considered fairly fast from what I have heard as the average is 6-12 months. I have spoken with one US nurse (Bachelor's prepared) that had so much difficulty with the council that she applied through Australia (and had her registration in a week!) and because of the Trans Tasman Mutual Recognition Act between OZ and NZ, they had to give her a NZ registration. The council was not happy with her but she is now living and working in NZ.

Stay in touch. Let me know how things are going.

Cara

[carahafner]

Here is the response I got from someone at the council about RGN and RCN:

Most of the Bachelor prepared nurses from the US are given RN with a condition that they may work only in general nursing or general and obstetric nursing. It is because the three year Bachelor courses here are purely nursing; they do not have the other papers in them. Consequently because the majority of the US ones do it means that the number of both theory and clinical hours are less than here. Again if there is not educational equivalency in theory and /or practice the nurse will have conditions put on her/his practice in terms of where they are allowed to practice.