I write to impart some good news. As the professional regulator for nurses and midwives in Ireland we are eager to embrace and drive positive change within the system that will make us more accessible and also make the necessary interactions that registrants, HEIs, applicants, candidates and graduates have with us faster and easier to manage. In this context I am happy to be able to confirm that our new online portal will go live in September 2020.

Registered Nurses and Midwives:

Our new system has a real-time, self-serve objective meaning that you will for example be able to update your details, renew your registration and view your registration status online. There will be further updates and user guides in advance of the system going live aimed at supporting you when you need to use it. We would encourage you to keep an eye on our web site and ezine for updates.

Overseas Applicants:                                                                                              

Nurses and midwives who trained outside Ireland and wish to practice here will be able to apply through the new online system to have their qualifications recognised. On recognition they can then register with NMBI online. Our new system is designed to support applicants through the recognition process, pointing them to the documents they need to submit and providing them with live information on the status of their application.

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs):                                                                        

From this autumn HEIs will no longer need to send us a list of students for the Candidate Register at the start of term. Students will be responsible for registering directly with us. We do however require that once students have registered with us, HEIs log into our system to verify that they are enrolled on an NMBI accredited programme. Once a HEI provides verification, our registration team will review the application and the candidate or graduate will be added to the appropriate Register. Registers will update in real-time and will be searchable on our website.

Directors of Nursing and Directors of Midwifery:                                                 

When the new NMBI system goes live in September 2020 Directors of Nursing and Directors of Midwifery will need to continue to sign first time registration forms. The completed and signed forms will be uploaded by students to their NMBI account on our portal as part of the registration process.

Preparing Everyone for the New NMBI Online System and User Support:

We are doing our best at the moment to alert everyone who has an interest in NMBI to the changes that are coming, we have spoken to unions and representative bodies and are speaking to all HEIs. Hundreds of letters/emails continue to go out.

Registrars and allocation officers at HEIs will have scheduled training on the new system in August and September to support student verification.  We will also add user guides and a video to our web site in August which should help everyone.

We would really appreciate it if you could bring the September launch of this new system to the attention of your colleagues and if you or your colleagues have questions please do email our project team at nightingale@nmbi.ie.

Kind regards,

Sheila McClelland

CEO, NMBI