S3 Ep 5 - The One With Midwife Adrianne - Licence To Practise - from UK to South Africa to UK - OSCE For Midwives
** Sit back and listen, it's time for Licence to Practise by IELTS Medical.
Link: https://youtu.be/hmaLYT6YJ1Q
In Season 3 Episode 4 - The One With Nurse Yaw - Christina has a chat with Yaw, a UK Registered General Nurse who moved to the UK from Ghana.
Featured Course: OSCE for Nurses : https://www.oscenurses.com
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Christina:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of season three of License To Practice from IELTS Medical. Today, we're going to be chatting with midwife Adrianne, who moved from the UK to South Africa, completed her nursing and midwifery training, worked in South Africa, and then moved back to the UK to practice as a midwife here. Don't forget to like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode and let's give Adrianne a call. Hi, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How are you today?
Midwife Adrianne:
I'm doing really well. Thank you.
Christina:
Good, good, good to hear. So if you could just start by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about you.
Midwife Adrianne:
Yeah, no problem. I'm Adrianne and I studied in South Africa for five years, doing a nursing degree before I decided to move back to the UK with my husband.
Christina:
Oh, great. Okay. So back to the UK, so are you from the UK originally?
Midwife Adrianne:
Yeah, I'm an English citizen, so I was born and brought up here and then my mom's side of the family is South African. So I decided to take a leap of faith and move to South Africa to study.
Christina:
Right. So that's where you did all of your training?
Midwife Adrianne:
Yeah, that's all my nursing training was done in South Africa.
Christina:
Okay. So, so obviously you being a British citizen, was the process slightly different for you than it would be for other people that had studied in South Africa, but were from South Africa and not a British citizen already?
Midwife Adrianne:
No, the process was the same. So it was like, I was a foreigner moving back to the UK to re-register with the English nursing council, because I was registered previously with the South African nursing council.
Christina:
Oh, oh. So did you come here before you started the process of becoming registered or did you start the process before you moved back?
Midwife Adrianne:
I moved here and then started the process.
Christina:
Okay. And how did you find that? How did you find studying for it and the exams and everything? How's that go for you?
Midwife Adrianne:
The CBT, I think was the harder one because there wasn't a lot of information specific to midwifery. So a lot of the information that was found was more so specific to general nursing. And one of my friends, also South African moved back. And at the time, thankfully we were talking because the information we found, we could share with each other, whereas the OSCE was a bit nicer because I went through a [inaudible 00:02:29] for the OSCE, so I could get information for the OSCE, which helped build up the foundation for what I needed to know to pass.
Christina:
So why did you decide to go to IELTS medical to help with the OSCE?
Midwife Adrianne:
So where I'm based in the UK, there's not a lot of available jobs in hospitals that could give me the practical aspect of it.
Christina:
Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
So English policies I found were very different and a lot of the information that English midwifery is based on, is similar in context, but what you have to do in certain processes varied. So I found that I was a little bit of a loss and IELTS provided an opportunity where I could get that foundation that I couldn't achieve in the hospitals because of the lack of access.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
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Christina:
So obviously you mentioned there that a couple of differences between practicing in South Africa and practicing in the UK. Did you notice any other differences? Are there a lot of big differences?
Midwife Adrianne:
Yes and no. So the context is the same, obviously the anatomy of the human body remains the same.
Christina:
Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
So the basic processes for different things are the same, but what we were exposed to in South Africa and what you're expected to know in the UK is what I found more difficult. So things like shoulder dystocia and breach birth, you do have access to it. I have delivered breach babies and I've done shoulder dystocia. But in the UK, when you go in for your OSCE, you're expected to know the full process of what you would do after and what the next step would be. Whereas most of the time in South Africa, we only had to do it up until the point where you delivered the baby.
Christina:
Right. Oh yeah. Okay, so that is quite a big difference then. And is that something that was part of your exams to become registered here or is that something you found out once you started working or not found out, but had exposure to?
Midwife Adrianne:
So it was part of the exam. So in the midwifery exam, the OSCE, the practical exam, you have your emergency procedures and the new exam, so not the legacy exam.
Christina:
Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
So the steps that you need to understand for the new OSCE follow, a shoulder dystocia, follow all the way through until surgery or the worst case scenarios. Whereas in our previous exams, we were never exposed to that in South Africa. So we were only exposed to that in practice and emergency procedures were moreso on a theoretical side rather than a practical side for exams.
Christina:
So would you say then that, even though, obviously you've already done all your training and were working as a midwife in Africa, do you think that the OSCE, the practical exam helped with working in the UK? Was it handy to do almost?
Midwife Adrianne:
Not necessarily for working, but it was handy to do because it's helped me appoint where maybe I needed more overview of what I needed to know for a hospital setting. So now if you gave me a shoulder dystocia and something were to go past the point where I've done it previously, I now know the next step. So it gives me more information to make me a better rounded practitioner.
Christina:
Yeah. Yeah. So do you have any advice for people that might be considering moving to the UK and are just starting out on their journey?
Midwife Adrianne:
To gain as much information as possible, which is really difficult to do. So programs like IELTS really assist that. And I know IELTS do CBT as well, so maybe it would've been better for me to go through somewhere like IELTS for a CBT course, so I had more information about that before I took the exam, because my CBT actually failed my first sitting for the CBT.
Christina:
Okay.
Midwife Adrianne:
I found that I didn't have enough information and the information I did know in a multiple choice setting wasn't necessarily the right answer, especially when it came to policies and procedures in England. But the best is to just read a lot, so the NMC guidelines and they have so much access on the NMC site for you to access prior to these exams. And I don't think I necessarily took use of that until my OSCE.
Christina:
Yeah. Well, I suppose you wouldn't know, would you, if it was your first time doing it.
Midwife Adrianne:
No.
Christina:
That's the point of this podcast to help other people that might not know. How long did it take you to complete the whole process?
Midwife Adrianne:
So I think it took me about 12 months.
Christina:
Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
The difficulty is the time that I came back was during COVID.
Christina:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
So yeah, I think if it weren't for COVID, it may have been quicker. But because of the backlash of COVID, for me to book my OSCE, took quite a long time. I think there was a four month period in between me booking my CBT and passing to me booking my OSCE.
Christina:
Yeah. Yeah. And is everything going well? Are you happy to be back in the UK and working here?
Midwife Adrianne:
Yeah. I think it's an eyeopener to see how it's slightly different. So South Africa's a third world country and what you're exposed to and what you do on a daily basis is done on paperwork and it's done with facilities that you don't necessarily have access to. Whereas in the UK, it's quite nice to be in an environment where you have access to these facilities.
Christina:
Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
And it runs quite a lot smoother than what I did in South Africa.
Christina:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad that you're enjoying being in the UK and working as a midwife here. Before I let you go, have you got any kind of pearls of wisdom to share?
Midwife Adrianne:
I think that if you have a dream that you should just follow it through.
Christina:
Yeah.
Midwife Adrianne:
And I think the best thing about this process is it's humbled me that regardless of how experienced you believe you are, there's always opportunity to grow with that experience.
Christina:
Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. That's a lovely thing to say. Well, thank you so much for coming on and yeah, best of luck with everything.
Midwife Adrianne:
Thank you. Have a blessed day.
Christina:
You too. Bye.
Midwife Adrianne:
Bye.
Christina:
Thank you so much once again, for listening to License To Practice from IELTS Medical. I really hope that you enjoyed my chats with Adrianne and that she inspired you to follow your dreams and become registered here in the UK. Don't forget to like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And I will see you next time and as always, to your success.
