When I was younger, I dreamt of a career that would give me the opportunity to care for and support other people. To be where I am today, just nine years after completing my nurses training in my native Nigeria, sometimes still surprises yet always delights me.
At the end of last year, I was elected to become the North West region’s representative on the Professional Nursing Committee. This is an opportunity I intend to seize with both hands. A chance to try to effect the change we nurses wish to see. The changes, in fact, that we need to see, to keep our patients safe and to protect our under-pressure workforce. I will use my time on the Committee doing all I can to improve the profession I love so much.
Holding this role as an Internationally Educated Nurse makes me, perhaps, even more pleased. When I moved to the UK in 2019 to further my career, I found the transition difficult. As is the case for the vast majority of IENs, I was leaving behind my home and my family and starting over again in a new and unfamiliar place.
After three years in Nigeria working in specialties including Medical and rehabilitation, I began my career in the UK on the acute respiratory ward at East Surrey Hospital. I’d describe the support I received at the time of my move as adequate. We had practice development nurses who supported OSCE Training and provided pastoral support, and the provision of staff accommodation for the first three months certainly took away one of the more stressful elements.
The arrival of my family a few months later brought a new sense of finding where I really belonged and, in 2020, I made the move to East Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, where I became an RCN Learning Rep and took up my current role as the Pastoral Care Nurse. It gives me enormous pleasure to play such an important role in supporting other IENs in their transition into life and work in this country. The challenges of such a move are many and the emotional toll of leaving behind the life you know can be very hard to bear if you don’t receive the help and support that you need.
My greatest wish is to secure nurses, whatever the country of our birth, the recognition that our vast reserve of knowledge and skills so richly deserves. My colleagues on the PNC share this ambition, working tirelessly to advance the profession from every perspective. I hope in the year ahead that I will go some way towards achieving that aim.
