Wanted: 200 Filipino nurses to solve staffing crisis at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital

A team from the hospital, expected to be six-strong, will head over to the Philippines in the next fortnight, with a second group heading out shortly after.

Their aim will be to recruit 200 nurses for Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, which was recently rated as 'requiring improvement'.

As well as New Cross, the nurses could also be placed at Cannock Chase Hospital and West Park Hospital.

David Loughton, the Trust's Chief Executive, said he expects the team to interview more than 1,000 candidates.

Previously, because of UK immigration laws, the trust could only recruit staff from the EU.

But earlier this month the government made a u-turn in the wake of the staffing crisis facing NHS trusts across the country.

Home Secretary Theresa May said nurses would be temporarily added to the Government's 'shortage occupation list' – an official register of jobs which cannot be filled by UK residents.

However this is only until March 2016, meaning Mr Loughton and his team will have to recruit the 200 nurses by then.

Mr Loughton made the announcement at the monthly board meeting of the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust on Monday.

He said: "We are looking for 200 nurses from the Philippines. We have got no budget but we are going to have to set up a team of six to eight people to help sort out these 200 with accommodation and such for when they arrive.

"We are playing a game of pass the parcel at the moment with this budget deficit but what's more important, money or patient safety? We have got no choice but to recruit as many staff as we can."

Roger Dunshea, a non-executive director on the trust's board, raised concerns that the Filipino nurses who come in may follow the same pattern as those from Europea who only stay at the hospital for an average of 9.78 months before either returning home or moving on to other hospitals in the UK.

But Cheryl Etches OBE, the Trust's chief nursing officer, insisted that history had shown that those from the Philippines tended to stick around for longer.

Mr Loughton confirmed this to the Express & Star after the meeting when he said: "This is not the first time we have done it. It was about 15 years ago we went to the Philippines and some of the nurses we brought back are now some of our most senior staff."

The trust faces staffing problems as it cannot recruit enough staff and does not have the money to spend on agency staff.

In another attempt to ease the country's NHS staffing crisis, Health Education England has increased nurse training places by 14 per cent over the past two years and is forecasting that more than 23,000 extra nurses will be in place by 2019.