NURSES from Australia and New Zealand could be offered the cost of their flights and a £1,000 relocation package to solve a recruitment crisis in Oxfordshire’s hospitals.

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust (OUHT) needs to fill a gap of 452 nurses and has been running recruitment drives in European countries such as Spain and Portugal.

So far more than 250 EU nurses have been offered jobs, but now the trust is looking to the Southern Hemisphere in its recruitment drive.

The trust runs the John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals in Headington, Oxford’s Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Banbury’s Horton General.

OUHT chief nurse Catherine Stoddart, who herself moved from Australia to take up the role in March 2014, said: “We are struggling to recruit. We know the issues.

“Recruiting from abroad is one solution.”

Between April 2013 and 2014 the organisation recruited 96 nurses from overseas, but in the past year the trust has offered jobs to more than 250 nurses from abroad, all from the EU.

OUHT currently has 3,190 permanent nurses, but said it needed an additional 452 to be fully staffed.

As reported in the Oxford Mail, the trust spent more than £20m last year on agency nurses and bank staff to plug these gaps.

But Ms Stoddart was hopeful that the hospitals can take advantage of home grown talent in the future.

Oxford Brookes has announced plans to train an extra 300 nurses, increasing nursing students at the university to 1,300.

Ms Stoddart said: “It is not only an issue that affects Oxford, it’s a national and an international issue.

“We have managed to keep a staffing level that has been safe, partly because we have been able to move staff.

“We would like to get more graduate nurses – we have a limited pool that we can draw on from Oxford.”

She added: “The really important thing for us is to bring in young, emerging, passionate and keen nurses who want to change the world.

“At the moment we have a shortage of graduate nurses in Oxford, as a lot of graduates go home after studying.

“We need to attract them to work here as Oxford’s a centre of excellence.”

Prof Alistair Fitt said the sizeable increase would be good news for Oxfordshire hospitals.

The university currently runs nursing courses at its campuses in Headington and Marston Road, Oxford, and at its Ferndale campus in Swindon.

The proposed increase in local nurse training over the next five years was welcomed by Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, with the news coming as the trust celebrated International Nursing Day on Tuesday.

Ms Stoddart added: “We very much welcome Oxford Brookes providing more places for nurse training.”

“It is always a good thing when there are more opportunities for training. The foundation of good nursing is to combine vocational calling with excellent training.”

Prof Fitt said the increase in nursing students would coincide with major improvements at Brookes.

The university is about to embark on a 10-year building improvements programme.