A recent trip to India to recruit new doctors to work in Worcestershire’s hospitals has been hailed a success, with more than 30 doctors offered posts.

The week-long trip to New Delhi and Bangalore in July, was part of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust’s recruitment strategy to fill consultant and middle-grade vacancies at the Alexandra, Kidderminster and Worcestershire Royal Hospitals.

The trust says recruitment to both medical and nursing vacancies is one of its top priorities in order to improve both the quality and safety of patient care, and drive down spending on locum and agency staff.

Di Pugh, deputy director of human resources at the trust, travelled to India as part of a team including medical and surgical consultant colleagues and recruitment specialists from HCL to carry out the interviews.

She said: “We carried out 53 interviews and are absolutely delighted that we have been able to make 34 offers across a range of medical and surgical specialties – including respiratory, neurology, trauma and orthopaedics and general surgery.

"The calibre of the candidates we interviewed was exceptional and we are now preparing for the new recruits – both consultants and clinical fellows – to join us.”

Dr Sally Millett, consultant anaesthetist, said: “The trip to India was a first for the trust. We had three full days of interviewing doctors from all over India including some Skype interviews with those from even further afield.

"It is a real win-win – it provides our organisation with much needed doctors to fill vacancies whilst enabling those doctors to come and develop their skills and experience within the NHS.”

Dr David Jenkins, consultant physician at the trust, added: “We met many highly-motivated and able doctors who had clearly achieved great things for their patients.”

The new doctors will participate in a full induction programme at the trust when they arrive, which includes access to a mentor and ‘buddy’ who will work to ensure they settle in as quickly as possible.

The trust has blamed a combination of factors including national shortages of medical staff in certain specialties as well as a prolonged period of uncertainty at the trust on its ability to recruit doctors and nurses.

However thanks to a number of measures it has reduced its number of medical vacancies from 153 to 110 since May.

Worcestershire Acute Trust has been in special measures since December 2015 and in June the Care Quality Commission (CQC) announced it would remain so until further review, stating that the trust was “inadequate”.

In a report the CQC said that rather than improving, the trust’s problems had got worse – something it called “extremely concerning”.

On top of this, in May the trust missed its financial target and ended up with a £4.5m deficit, which was £300,000 more than expected.

The overspend was mainly down to the trust making fewer spending cuts in May and overspending on temporary staff.