70 nurses taken on at Wolverhampton's New Cross in bid to ease strain
Almost 70 nurses have been taken on at New Cross Hospital to help ease the strain on overworked staff.
Bosses at the hospital, besieged with extra patients in its hectic A&E unit, have moved to initiate the six-figure recruitment drive after a tremendously busy year.
The nurses will be deployed in a variety of departments and include 37 joining from overseas as part on an ongoing multi-million pound programme.
The foreign recruitment drive has proved controversial but New Cross boss David Loughton has insisted that if local nurses are good enough, they will be taken on too.
The new overseas recruits were identified during a five-day hiring process in Milan and Athens last October.
And they will be joined by 29 newly qualified nurses from the University of Wolverhampton, making 66 in total who all start in January.
Twelve of the new employees are paediatric nurses and it follows on from the hospital taking on 16 new midwives last September.
Laura Southan, acting head of Nursing Education at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, said: "We are delighted to be taking on 29 newly-recruited nurses from the University of Wolverhampton alongside 37 overseas nurses who will be arriving in January.
"The trust is working closely with Health Education West Midlands to look at all options to recruit nurses and to encourage people who want take up nursing as a career to train locally.
"We are also making a concerted effort to recruit return to practice nurses and see this having a positive bearing on our intake programme."
Bosses are casting their net far and wide as the trust expands its workload by taking on services from the dissolved Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
There are already 57 nurses at the trust from Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania, hired as part of a multi-million pound project which began last year.
All underwent a six-week training programme which include English language lessons.
The foreign nurses have also been given special lessons in Black Country dialect.
Ms Southan added: "It's pleasing that many of our latest recruits are friends of the overseas nurses already here who told them about the great support they have received.
"The first three cohorts have adapted well. Lessons learned from their inductions mean the latest cohort will be offered extra practice in oral drugs assessments and administration as well as drug pronunciation."
It is likely that big recruitment drives will continue throughout the year as the trust adjusts to life running two hospitals, after taking over the running of Cannock Chase Hospital.
At New Cross a new £30million Emergency Centre opens in November 2015.
