From NYSC to NHS: How I Moved My Family to Manchester as a Nurse

From NYSC to NHS

Five years after NYSC in Ilorin, I was on a flight to Manchester with my wife and our two-year-old.

The route

NMC registration had three gates: the CBT exam (taken in Lagos), the English requirement (I used OET — easier for clinical vocabulary), and the OSCE on arrival.

The money question

The Health and Care visa waived the IHS for me — but dependents still needed funds. Our total spend before the first payslip was roughly £7,800 including flights and first month's rent.

The hardest part

Not the exams — the waiting between stages. Each email took weeks. Community timelines on JapaConnect kept me sane; my process matched the median almost exactly.

One year in

My wife started a top-up degree; childcare costs were the shock, not the weather. We are applying for a dependant route review and planning ILR timelines.

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