More overseas staff recruited to work on Shropshire hospital wards
More than 80 nurses have been recruited from overseas to work in Shropshire's hospitals, it was revealed today.
It comes as part of a recruitment drive to fill staff nurse vacancies and reduce the use of expensive agency or temporary staff at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.
A total of more than 150 new staff nurses, including those from abroad, and health care assistants (HCAs) have been recruited to work at Shropshire's two acute hospitals in the last couple of months.
The new health staff will either work at either of the two hospitals and some have already taken up their posts.
Recruits hired at home and abroad in recent months include around 100 staff nurses and around 70 health care assistants (HCA), most of which are on permanent contracts, with the rest recruited for the hospitals' bank of temporary staff.
Of these, 72 staff nurses were hired from the Philippines, a further 17 from recruitment events at RSH earlier this month, eight from Italy and a further two from Denmark.
All of the recent 69 HCA appointments were recruited following information days held at RSH and PRH earlier this year.
Recruitment, specifically for registered nurses, will continue with weekly interviews under way among other initiatives.
Trusts across England and Wales are increasingly resorting to recruiting nurses from overseas because there are not enough British-trained applicants to fill places, with some interviewed by Skype.
Sarah Bloomfield, director of nursing and quality at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said: "Our staff nurses and health care assistants deliver excellent care to our patients at both RSH and PRH.
"Our recruitment has focused on ensuring our new recruits display the caring and compassionate qualities we rightly require.
"We have said consistently that we want to recruit more nurses to reduce our reliance on agency and temporary staff. Our Trust is not alone – the situation is reflected nationally – so we have been looking at a number of innovations we can introduce to recruit staff locally, across the UK and overseas.
"We'll continue our efforts to ensure that over the coming months we will see more permanent staff on our wards.
