SOUTH West Acute Hospital is set for a staffing boost following confirmation that the Western Health and Social Care Trust is recruiting 100 international nurses into the region from next month. 

Contracts are being offered to nurses from Italy and the Philippines to come and work in the Western Trust hospitals across Derry, Fermanagh and Tyrone.

The Trust says the move to attract nurses here has been prompted by staff shortages right across the North. 

Health bosses have been looking to attract fresh recruits from overseas to fill the gap left by the emigration and impending retirements of existing medical staff. Two international recruitment companies – TTM and HCL – were awarded the tenders to undertake the drive.

Officials from the North travelled to the Philippines in May and later to Italy in a bid to recruit up to 1,000 nurses to work in the health service here.

Recent figures revealed that in the 12 months to April 2015, a total of £25m was spent by the Western Trust on agency staff. 

Italian nurses will arrive in the county from September to be followed by others from the Philippines in November. The successful applicants have been receiving English language training. Initially they will be employed as healthcare assistants while they complete the necessary registration process with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). Once they are registered with the NMC, the nurses will be placed across the Western Trust to fill existing vacancies.  

The Trust said it could not confirm at this stage how many of the new recruits will be ultimately be staffed in Enniskillen. 

A spokesman told the Herald: “An acute shortage of nurses in Northern Ireland has led to a regional international recruitment campaign for all of the Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland. To date 488 job offers have been made to nurses from the Philippines and 40 to European nurses.”

The Trust’s Director of Nursing, Alan Corry Finn, said: “Our International staff play a significant part in the ongoing care and wellbeing of all our patients in the Western Trust. It is strategically important that the Trust explores all nursing recruitment avenues to maintain and develop this, domestic and internationally.”

The news will come as a relief for staff at the hospital, with this newspaper previously reporting extreme pressures facing health service workers in Fermanagh. Last November branch secretary for the Fermanagh and Omagh Health Branch of Unison, Jill Weir said services were “all at breaking point”.

Local MLA Richie McPhillips says the fact the Western Trust are recruiting International and European nurses reflects the very real workforce pressures the health service is facing and the lack of home grown nurses being trained to deal with increasing demand. 

“Our existing nursing workforce are working under extreme and intolerable pressures and I would hope that these additional nurses go some way in alleviating this pressure and in ensuring that patients get the best possible care and treatment.

“It’s also important that, as we move forward with an increasing ageing population and with increasing demand on the health system, that a proper workforce plan is put in place within the Western Trust to ensure the nursing vacancy rate is as low as possible,” he said.