Jumoke Olasunkanmi
The Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria for practice abroad,” The Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria has announced that nurses and midwives will now require two years post-qualification work experience from the date of issuance of permanent practising license before their certificates can be verified by foreign nursing boards/councils.
This announcement was made via a circular titled “Revised guidelines for the verification of certificate(s) with the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria for practice abroad,” released on Thursday where the council dictated significant changes to the process for Nigerian nurses and midwives seeking to practice abroad.
According to the circular, nurses and midwives must now have a minimum of two years of work experience after graduation before they can’t be licensed to work in other countries.
The council emphasized the importance of this requirement, stating that applicants with provisional licenses will be outright rejected.
Furthermore, all applicants seeking to relocate must possess an active practising license with a minimum of six months left until the expiration date. This is in line with the council’s efforts to enhance the standards of nursing education and practice to align with global best practices.
The revised guidelines, which will come into effect on March 1, 2024, according to NMC will streamline the verification process. However, it is expected that the application process will now take a minimum of six months, a significant increase from the previous two-week timeframe.
In its statement, the council clarified that all pending verification applications submitted before the implementation of these guidelines will be processed according to the previous guidelines.
NMC’s decision is not unrelated to the mass migration of health workers from the country. In 2022, the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) announced that more than 57,000 nurses have left the country in the past five years.
It added that the country currently has a nurse-to-patient ratio of 1 nurse to 1,160 patients, a far cry from the World Health Organization’s recommended 1 nurse to 5 patients.
