Southampton General Hospital has recruited 181 nurses after its busiest summer in 10 years

More than 180 nurses are starting work across several wards at Southampton General Hospital after bosses stepped up a recruitment drive.

The new haul of staff includes freshly-qualified nurses both from the UK and abroad, after the hospital launched a European recruitment drive that stretched across multiple countries including Spain, the Nether-lands and Scandinavia.

And it comes following an exceptionally busy summer at the Tremona Road site, with staff saying there has been no let-up in comparison to other years, when it is normally so quiet they close wards.

A board meeting of University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the General, heard the recruitment drive was part of a plan to fill a 14 per cent job vacancy gap.

Judy Gillow, director of nursing, said: “We were always concerned that August was going to be our most pressured month and pressure in the hospital has been intense.

“We have had to make very difficult risk assessments to make sure wards are covered, but I think it’s important that our staff see there is light at the end of the tunnel and we are forecasting we will get our vacancies down to around eight per cent in March.”

Mrs Gillow added the hospital had a three pronged approach to recruitment – targeting newly-qualified nurses, recruiting nurses from abroad and holding open days for specific departments.

She said: “This gives us 181 nurses from these three initiatives which will significantly help us. But we are not stopping there because we want to fill more vacancies.

“Staffing is still a major challenge but we are doing a lot of work to try to change that and we have to recognise the work our nurses are already doing.”

Director of Nursing Judy Gillow

The hospital has set up a scheme to bring over Spanish and Portuguese nurses while it is also advertising in other parts of Europe, including Scandinavia and the Netherlands, which are approved because they meet the high standards required by the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

A separate recruitment drive is also under way to find a squad of medics ahead of the winter season at the General, specifically to deal with the annual norovirus outbreaks that can result in ward closures in the colder months.

Meanwhile the meeting also heard the hospital emergency department was extremely busy during the summer, carrying out 350 more operations in August 2014 compared to last year.

Jane Hayward, director of transformation and improvement at the hospital, said: “It does not feel like we have had a summer this year. What normally happens in the summer is that the hospital quietens down and over the last five to ten years we would actually close wards during the summer, but we have not seen that this year.

“We have had 351 extra operations, which is a fantastic achievement given we have staff who are on their summer holidays.”

She added there had been an increase of 400 referrals from other health services over the past six months, but they had all been serious cases.

Ms Hayward said: “We are not seeing a flood of patients who should have gone to their GPs. That’s not something we think is an issue and the patients we are seeing are ones we feel should be coming to the emergency department.”

The hospital said it will also try to reduce unnecessary admissions to the emergency department by running videos in its waiting room showing patients how to use the NHS 111 phone service for non-emergency matters.