From Lagos to a Manchester Hospital Ward
I qualified as a registered nurse in Lagos in 2016 and spent six years working in a busy general hospital before deciding to pursue NMC registration and a UK job offer. The process took about 14 months from starting my NMC application to actually landing in Manchester — longer than I expected, mostly because of delays verifying my Nigerian qualifications and booking an OSCE slot. Once I had my NMC pin and a confirmed job offer from an NHS trust, the Health and Care Worker visa itself moved fairly quickly. I arrived in Manchester in March 2023 with my husband joining me four months later once his own paperwork was sorted. The first few months were genuinely hard — adjusting to a completely different pace of clinical documentation, the weather, and being far from my mother for the first time in my life. But my trust had a genuinely supportive international recruitment team, and by month six it started to feel like home.
I wish I had started my NMC application a full year before I actually did — I underestimated how long document verification from Nigerian institutions takes, and I lost several months just waiting. I'd also tell anyone starting this journey to budget for the OSCE exam and any resit separately from your general moving costs, since it's a real expense on its own and I almost didn't have enough saved when my first attempt didn't go as planned. Finally, join a Nigerian nurses' WhatsApp group for your specific city before you arrive, not after — I found mine three months in and wished I'd had that support from day one.