A GROUP of Filipino nurses has arrived in Blackburn as part of a drive to fill vacancies across East Lancashire Hospitals Trust.

Two have arrived this week to join three who arrived the previous week and more are expected in the coming weeks, with the final total expected to be about 80.

MORE TOP STORIES:

The nurses, who have to pass a tough English exam before they can be accepted, as well as pre-employment checks, have been recruited by the trust to work at the Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals.

And they are already benefitting from a careful induction process to help them integrate into their new lives.

Julie Molyneaux, deputy director of nursing with the trust, said: “Once they arrive for work here, in addition to the our corporate induction that all new starters attend, they undergo a comprehensive training and induction session.

“This includes shadowing nurses on the wards and in the community with support and informal mentoring from a pastoral support officer and from the Filipino nurse community who are already successfully settled and have been working at the trust for a number of years.”

The latest nursing intake will, at least initially, be living together in hospital accommodation.

A trust spokesman said that the nurses would be arriving just a few at a time, with five already in place.

She said: “We recognise how important it is to spend time on induction.

“We have extra pastoral person, a retired nurse, to help them hit the ground running and ensure they are happy in their work, because it can be quite a culture shock to come to a new job in a different country.

“There is also an existing Filipino community that provides a lot of support to help them settle.”

She said that the support had paid dividends in terms of retention, which she described as “very good”.

Most of the nurses will initially be based at the two hospitals, with some working on the wards and some in the community, depending on their experience.

The Filipinos are not the first recruits from overseas. In 2014 the trust brought in nurses from Italy, Portugal and Romania.

At the time there was criticism after it emerged that about a quarter had returned home after finding it difficult to adjust to life in England.