Brian I think thats a good idea...that was going to be my next posting. Im interested how many people are employed as opposed to self employed.
Sarah its not that its not recognised...my job was working with patients with conditions causing sight loss, this role does not exist in France....my speciality is very narrow...and was formed with the NHS and RNIB around 16 years ago. I worked within the hospital eye clinic and local optometrists...here opticians fit glasses in the UK they are eye health professionals.... thus...I would have to work in another speciality...but having worked for so many years in ophthalmology, and specifically sight loss conditions...I am way out of date with the other areas I worked in which were coronary care and cancer care (community).
To get back on subject, it wasn't anything about France that made me come here, it was my French boyfriend. If he'd been Spanish I would have gone to Spain.
We subsequently got married and had children, and I got a job and made my life here. We are now divorced but my life is still here with the boys and the job. It's especially the job that's keeping me here, obviously as it provides me with the means to stay.
I have now put up a group 'Working in France'. The first discussion is a run down of the European Qualifications Framework for those who want to know if their qualifications are valid or not, doesn't have much to do with Carol's original topic but captures where the present end of it seems to have arrived.
Good idea Brian. :)
Meant thanks Sarah last post. Anyway, Sarah you have inspired me to try to set up a group on employment and work matters so that this repeated topic and such info as the ENIC site are accessible and can be directly referred to.
Exactly, this is part of France's contribution to the European Qualifications Framework that I have often pointed people too. There are far too many myths about qualifications, some of them the fault of bureaucrats who lack basic knowledge and so of it rumours between people who have heard from a friend of a firend who knows somebody. Thanks Carol, hope it helps inform people.
Carol
I don't understand how your nursing diploma/degree is not recognised in France especially when you see this:
La législation communautaire avait prévu une reconnaissance automatique des diplômes par l'application de directives sectorielles pour quelques professions relevant essentiellement du domaine médical ou paramédical.
from here: http://www.ciep.fr/enic-naricfr/rediplue.php
France needs nurses, how can you be having all this trouble?!
More on diplomas here: http://www.ciep.fr/enic-naricfr/comparabilite.php
as I said Brian...good to hear...I think most countries have problems staffing the same areas...its the same in the UK. My friends gave up trying with Bergerac and one went back to the UK the other moved areas and worked outside of a hospital but still nurses in the community.
I think thats a wonderful attitude Brian...and you are echoing my point...that home can be anywhere...and most of us can/will adapt...some have more difficulty....but I think that moving around the world is more likely to produce a tolerant person...hoping that it works out that way for my kids.
Carol, as much as I say I am a Scot I do not have that 'fixed' need to belong feeling. I had my early years in Germany, then England, then another part of England, Peru, Germany again (another part at that), French Switzerland, Italian Switzerland, Norway, Wales, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and all the countries I have worked in that came with the job and what Feel is simply that I am an internationalist who wants all of these ridiculous artificial boundaries knocked down and they we are allowed to simply get on with life wherever we put our feet.
Actually, Carol when I was in Bergerac they twice wheeled on British nurses suspecting that as I came out of anaesthesia I would obviously not speak a word of French, etc. The head nurse, we got to know him pretty well, has nursed in England for a while himself said that the hospital lacks specialist nurses, so that in orthopedics where I was first time in, they had to send the nurses over from other depts. He says they are short of nurses in that department whereas midwifery and gerontology are both full with plenty of candidates locally for replacements. British, or any other nurses, as long as they have adequate French would be quite welcome.
Thats cheering Tracy, your friend probably wouldnt be employable in the UK if she has been out for more than a year or two...but anyway..in France this could well be a local thing...here one of my friends has spent 18 months volunteering and still is being told their French not good enough despite an A level at grade A and 5 years of lessons...(the last year, one to one lessons four times a week!) I think its the fact they are willing to accept volunteering...obviously the French good enough for that!
One of my friends is UK qualified and employed as a nurse in Burgundy, despite speaking little french. She was amazed how easy it was to obtain employment despite being out of the profession for several years, it obviously varies from region to region.
Good to hear this Deborah....you are the first UK trained nurse I personally have come across working in a French hospital. My experiences are mainly based on nursing in the Dordogne...where I know a few nurses, interestingly mainly male nurses...not able to gain employment...in fact this all involves one hospital, Bergerac! who have stated they dont wish to employ foreign nurses when French nurses are unemployed. It may be a local thing. Having friends who have nursed in Australia, the US and Canada...what sort of hoops Deborah?
having joined some ango/french organisations...I can absolutely agree with you. Met lots of people all with such different histories...hopes...aims...etc...makes life so much more interesting! :-)
I realise that my situation isn't that of most here on sfn - I try to remember and take it into account when answering. It's a good thing we're all a little different - would be a nightmare if everyone wanted to live in the same place! ;-)
i agree....look at so many of the people on this site and they have moved their kids from the UK, Germany, Holland wherever to move them to France....Children do adapt...so do adults...but one day when the children finish school they will make their choices...just as mine did...first child went straight from uni to Korea...and began her life of an expat...the second one was off to Oz and the third one by 28 moved for good (he says) to Dubai. All of us have the ability to move out of our comfort zones...if we are willing to....thats the brilliant thing about the human race...we adapt. We know two couples who have moved on every two or three years...with their family...for them there is no home..just a series of places they live for a while...would be interesting to know what effect it has on the kids in future life.
Take care, keep your nose in every few weeks to let us know how you are doing and let's hope it all passes over and we can just get on with life... a presto, buon nott'
We had a holiday home here and plans to retire here in due course, then I started working for an international company and they transferred me to their French head count so we could move earlier.