Blackpool's challenge to recruit nurses

More Fylde coast residents should be encouraged to train as nurses in order to stave of a potential future recruitment crisis, health chiefs have warned.

While staffing numbers 'are safe' at the moment, there are long-term challenges to face in attracting nurses, a public board meeting of the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was told.

Non-executive director Alan Roff said there was a national shortage of nurses, and while the latest intake was due to leave university soon there was a "high level of competition for recruitment."

He added: "We have a number of long term challenges in terms of nurses.

"When we start looking at providing an extra 40 beds over the winter, we are going to have to deal with the pressures of staffing those beds.

"I'm not saying it's a crisis or that we are not going to achieve it, but we have to keep an eye on the situation and plan for it.

"In the longer term we need to get more people locally training to be nurses, and more health care assistants and nurses trained up to the next level."

Paul Renshaw, interim director of people at Blackpool Victoria Hospital, said measures were currently in place to recruit around 100 new nurses and 50 doctors.

He added a new recruitment website would go live in September.

He said: "We are going to spend some money through the summer creating a clinical vacancy site, and talk about why people should come here to work and to live, and tackle some of the preconceptions people have."