Shropshire hospitals trust hoping to recruit 20 doctors in India and Dubai
A team of clinicians will be travelling to India and Dubai this week in the hope of recruiting up to 20 new doctors for Shropshire's overstretched A&E departments.
The group of four medical staff will be interviewing candidates during the six-day trip for positions within the emergency departments at Telford's Princess Royal Hospital and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
It is hoped that they will be able to recruit substantive middle grade doctors and consultants to help fill the vacancies within the A&E departments.
Last year, the threat of overnight closure hung over Telford's A&E department due to staff shortages but the decision was reversed in November.
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) is working with a specialist recruitment company which has helped other trusts in the UK secure clinical staff from overseas, and it will be the first time that the trust has sent staff to Dubai and India to interview and recruit workers.
Dr Jenni Rowlands, director of postgraduate education at SaTH, is part of the team travelling to Dubai and India.
She said: “This is the first time that we have been overseas to recruit like this.
"We are hoping that the trip will be a successful one for the trust, and that we will be able to make job offers whilst we are there.”
Chief executive of the trust, Simon Wright said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for us to be able to recruit the staff that we need to what is still a very fragile service.
Chance
“Whilst we managed to recruit enough middle grade doctors to keep the A&E at PRH open 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week at the end last year, they were a mixture of locum and agency staff.
"We are still considerably short of the substantive staff that we need to support our current teams.
“We have not stopped working behind-the-scenes to recruit to our emergency departments and we are leaving no stone unturned.
"We are hoping that this trip to India and Dubai will give us a real chance of securing staff into those substantive roles.
“With the reconfiguration of our hospitals now a reality, as well as all the efforts that are ongoing to make the trust an attractive place to work, we hope that this will further help our ability to recruit the emergency department doctors that we need to work in our trust for the benefit of our patients.”
The trust’s emergency departments currently have seven substantive consultants, two locum consultants with another due to join next month; and 14 substantive middle grade doctors and 10 locum middle grade doctors.
Another team from Sath is also heading to Dublin at the end of the month to recruit qualified nurses to work in a number of departments across the trust.
As well as the overseas recruitment drive, the trust is working on a number of initiatives to improve its offer to emergency medicine doctors including The Clinical Fellowship Programme and the CESR (Certificate of Eligibility for Specialist Registration) scheme, which are being developed jointly with Wolverhampton University.
Work has also begun on creating a new doctors’ mess within the PRH and six houses to accommodate junior doctors are being refurbished thanks to a DIY SOS-style appeal led by Telford & Wrekin Council.
