We held our biggest ever recruitment event on Saturday 1 February, offering jobs to 103 nurses.

The majority are students who will join us from September, once they’ve completed their training.

Among them are five nurses specialising in patients with learning disabilities (LDs). Employing more of these specialist nurses was a commitment we made following the death of Chloe Every, 27, who had learning disabilities, after the coroner raised concerns about an absence of LD nurses to help her communicate in a prevention of further deaths report.

Four more LD nurses are being interviewed in the next week.

A mental health nurse was also appointed, with two more being interviewed in the coming days.

These specialist LD and mental health nurses will join our A&E teams, while our Geriatrics department will also benefit from new LD nurses.

Four nurses specialising in children’s health were also appointed for our children’s wards, while 84 of the new recruits are adult nurses who will be allocated across our wards.

Nine qualified nurses were also offered posts.

Kathryn Halford, our Chief Nurse, said:

I am delighted this recruitment event was such a success and we found student nurses specialising in mental health and learning disabilities to join our teams.

We, like trusts across the country, are affected by shortages of specialist nurses, particularly to support patients with a learning disability. Welcoming these new colleagues will help make a difference for our patients straight away.

Beverley Sawer, Lead Recruitment Nurse, added:

Our largest ever number of student nurses attended this mass recruitment event, and it was real team effort putting it together.

To hold over 130 interviews in one day is unprecedented, previously the most we’ve done is 88. We had interviews taking place simultaneously across 10 rooms with 20 senior nurses and managers on the panels.

We look forward to welcoming all of our newly qualified nurses to our hospitals from this September.

This was an annual recruitment event aimed at third-year nursing students on placements at our Trust. Pictured above is our first successful candidate.