Newspaper, day two

So, what happened after my appearance on the front page of our local paper, criticizing a Norwegian governmental agency?


By 12:48pm that same afternoon I had an email in my inbox from the section leader of the nursing-license agency. It was a brief email, and basically said: "I regret that the processing of your complaint has taken a long time. SAFH has considered your complaint and added your comments and new information as a basis for review of your application for certification as a nurse. Our original decision to reject is now changed. I refer to an unsigned copy of the new decision that is attached."


Our original decision to reject is now changed! I wasn't floating on clouds, but I must admit--I was feeling pretty smug. It wasn't until about 5 minutes later than I realized there was an attached PDF and I opened the 4-page document, written in Norwegian. of course Having seen one of these letters before, I flipped to the final page, where they summarize their requirements. And there it was:


"In order to document that you have the necessary skills as a nurse in the Norwegian health care system, you must go through and pass the following courses and practice."


1. 3-week class in national subject for nurses (this was not a surprise, this is required for all foreign-educated nurses)
2. Minimum 6 weeks supervised clinicals in psychiatric healthcare (Still....???)
3. Minimum 5 weeks supervised clinical in medicine or surgery nursing  (Whaaa . . .???)


How is this different from their decision, after wrongly interpreting my four-year bachelor + master's degrees in nursing to be a two year degree, that they made in January 2011? What did they require me to do then?


4. 8 weeks of eldery care nursing (this is now removed)
5. National licensing exam for new nurses (thank God. . . this was a huge one).


BUT. . . 
After providing them with 12 weeks of full-time student employment on a med-surg floor, plus the documentation about my master's degree training, (not to mention our referring them to a Norwegian woman with a St. Olaf nursing degree just 3 years younger than I, who was approved for a license without all the bullshit extra clinicals). . . they did not change their requirements on psych clinicals at all, and they only reduced their requirements for med/surg clinicals from 8 weeks to 5 weeks! 


Don't read any further Mom, 'cause I'm about to use some profanity. . . 


WTF???

Good news from NOKUT

A little piece of good news arrived in our mailbox on Friday. NOKUT, the Nasjonalt organ for kvalitet i utdanningen (aka Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education), after nearly five months of deliberation, decided that my American bachelor's degree and master's degree are equivalent to a Norwegian bachelor's and master's. Actually, they ruled that my master's degree is in fact superior to a Norwegian master's degree, by 30 studiepoeng (essentially 30 credits). All in all, my 6 years of education amounts to 5.5 years of Norwegian higher education, as "det første studieåret av en høyere utdanning fra USA kan ikke godkjennes som høyere utdanning i Norge" (the first study year of higher education from the USA can not be approved as higher education in Norway). This is because high school in Norway takes a student through 13 grades, and college (a 3-year process) begins at the age of 19, not 18 as it does in the US.

So yes, this was good news, but in the end probably not terribly important. NOKUT just puts the stamp of approval on my degree, not the actual content of the education (i.e. comparing my nursing degree to a Norwegian nursing degree) or my nursing or midwifery licenses. For that we continue to wait for SAFH (State authority on health personnel), who stated the appeal process might take a month or more.

Incidentally, for anyone who is going through or contemplating going through this process, NOKUTs website stated this evaluation could be a four month process, and in fact it was nearly five months. Considered yourself forewarned. . .