Hello
We've been talking to the Nursing and Midwifery Council - the body that regulates nursing and midwifery in England and Wales - about our Postnatal Care Campaign. They are going to be writing a guest post soon for us outlining how Mumsnet users can feed in to a training curriculum review they're currently undertaking, but in the meantime they're seeking the views of service users on another developing issue.
The NMC currently requires all midwives and nurses recruited from overseas and the EU to be able to show they are competent in English. They can prove this language competence by taking an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test. Currently, the NMC asks for a standard of 7.0 in each area – listening, reading, writing and speaking. Other medical regulators tend to have similar requirements, while the General Medical Council, which regulates doctors, requires overseas recruits to have a score of 7.5.
Because of a shortage of nursing and midwifery staff, there have been calls among some employers and agencies for the NMC to drop the required standard to 6.5. The NMC would like to find out what service users think.
So do please add any comments to this thread and we will pass them on to the NMC. If you have any queries, let us know and we will pass those on too.
More information on the IELTS test is available here, and more information about the process for registering midwives and nurses from outside the UK is here.
Thanks
MNHQ