Burton Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust is bucking the trend - with the appointment of 17 nurses at a time of national shortages and mass resignations.
A successful recruitment drive has seen a major boost to the Trust's ranks, with the 17-strong team of permanent recruits including four newly-qualified midwives.
The recruitment team based at Queen’s Hospital has adopted a personal approach to recruitment to hire the new nurses, communicating via phone and face to face earlier in the process and including senior sisters in the recruitment phase.
Paula Gardner, chief nurse, said: "We felt it was important to make the nurses feel part of the family, even before they had agreed to start working at Burton Hospitals.
"It is imperative that we get to know the candidates at the earlier stages and allow them also to find out more about us – our values and our beliefs.
"By including senior sisters in the process, it also allowed us to pinpoint the exact skills and requirements we needed for our clinical teams, so that we could hire the right people for the right jobs.
"It is well documented that trusts are struggling to attract nurses to their hospitals and there is a national shortage.
"But this is a very positive time for the Trust and I am confident that our new recruits will provide the people of Burton, Lichfield and Tamworth with the high-quality care that they expect."
The good news comes just days after national figures revealed a third of workers in some NHS trusts quit their post in the last year alone.
The shock findings prompted bosses at Burton to reassure residents that recruitment remains "one of the trust's key focuses for the near future."
According to national statistics, the number of full- time nurses and health visitors in England dropped between April 2016 and April 2017 by 469.
Staff retention has been labelled as a big issue within the NHS with a leaver rate varying from under ten per cent in some trusts to more than 30 per cent in some acute and mental trusts.
Paula insisted that the trust was firmly focused on recruitment but faced challenges similar to other hospitals in the country.
She said: "The trust continues to attract good quality nurses to our hospitals. However, we, along with the majority of hospitals across the country, face significant challenges of recruiting more nursing staff and this continues to be one of the trust’s key focuses for the near future.
"The trust is constantly striving to ensure that the services we provide at Burton hospitals reflect the needs and requirements of our patients.
"The safety of our patients is our main priority and the trust ensures that wards and clinics are staffed correctly according to the needs of those patients."
