Hi Treena�Firstly, congratulation on getting in at Greenwich
The bursary is 6,500, more if you live in London, which should be more then enough to survive on. I survived on less then that, during my 1st degree in London.
Grade D Newly Qualified Nurses earns from 17,610 to 19,437 (nursing pay link below)
http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/nhs-knowledge_base/data/11.html

As you know, as a nurse youre never going to be rich, ever! Its going to take 4/5 years before you start to earn 26k a year, according to my research on pay! Am in the same boat as you, only difference is am a single 26 yr old man with a small dept & with no good jobs offers. The only reason why I have chosen nursing now is because you dont pay tuition fee and you get a decent bursary. Remember you can always defer your entry to 2007, so you could take the job & pay of your depts. But, if things dont work out after your trial period in your job, youll be back in limbo! Vie been told that with nursing your almost guarantied work anywhere, also you can do one yr and wk for awhile, pay off depts and go back to uni.

With two paying rent, you both should easily be able to afford decent place to rent. But if you decide to live on your own, then a decent place in London/Greenwich can be very expensive. For example, you pay 100 per week on rent (which is about the norm in London) thats 5200 a year, thats assuming you dont go back to your parents/family during the holidays. As you can see there not much left over to survive on - 1300 is nothing, but with two of you it should be feasible!

All work is boring and mundane, even nursing.

Please dont take offence, am just being honest and speaking from my own personal life experiences.

Ps I would really appreciate it if you or any uk nurses/students could help me with the interview Qs you get during the selection process.

All the best in what ever you do!
:wink:

Any job is what you make of it.....
Any job is what you make of it, especially with nursing. There are days that I wish I had gone into another profession and there are days that I wouldn't trade jobs for the world. When I went into nursing over 12 years ago, the hours did not bother me. Now that I am married and have 2 small children working long hours, weekends, and holidays get to me.

One good thing about being a nurse is job mobility. You can pretty much get a job anywhere. I have worked as a RN in the USA and in Australia. As a US trained RN it was very easy to get my RN license in Australia. Get a year or 2 of good medical/ surgical experience under your belt and your options for jobs are unlimited.

Cheers

Re: Hi Treena Firstly, congratulation on getting in at Green
Hiya
Many thanks for your reply! I have decided that I am going to go for it- no office job is ever going to satisfy my need to do something worthwhile, and it's only for three yrs! if it doesn't work out then it doesn't!

NOw to you - so you wish to become a nurse this year? Which universities are you applying to? It was so long ago I got my place, I kept deferring thinking I would save more money and am nearly out of debt and will be very nearly out of debt when I begin in May so definitely doing it!

The questions which they ask vary for the courses and the university! Luckily I got accepted at greenwich for Mental and adult health and got accepted at St Barts, which is apparently the best! I decided not to stay in London one though as Greenwich is much more local!! At Barts there was no interview as such - they sat you in a room of about 20 people (lots of diff groups) put a load of subjects into the middle i.e. "smoking should be banned" etc and you had to each pick a subject and take it in turns to introduce a debate... the idea was that you both initiated the discussion as well as engaged others and that it was well received, I think I knew what they were after, as some people just didn't want to listen to anybody else and spent the whole time expressing their view without listening to anyone elses! it was a case of expressing your view, and then allowing lots of responses, which you could argue, or agree with etc. Anyway this was very nerve wracking and I hate public speaking but I enjoyed it really as it was fun and gave you an insite in to the subjects which may come up as a nurse, and it worked obviously!!!
Greenwich was more simple but still very nerve wracking - the mental heatlh one more so! Adult one was an interview (i think!) with 2 pepople! both lovelY! just a straight forward why do you want to nurse etc, then the mental health one was a written exam, a maths exam (I haven't done maths since school and it was easY!) then a interview with a small (about 4) with a topic again and you discussed it as at barts. So that was the interview! if you want an idea of questions feel free to email me on [email protected] and I will help you! I hope this has helped a little! Best of luck