A student nurse shortage means Leighton Hospital is 'growing its own' – and hospitals are also struggling to recruit health care assistants because they can earn more at Tesco.

Sally Mann, deputy director of nursing at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, told Cheshire East Council's scrutiny committee that staff recruitment was an issue.

And it was particularly challenging when it comes to recruiting health care assistants who can get paid more working for Amazon or Tesco.

"I won't deny it, it's really challenging. The numbers of students that are being trained these days have reduced drastically," Mrs Mann told the committee yesterday (Thursday).

"We couldn't rely on UK-trained nurses alone as we used to be able to rely on, which is why we embarked about four or five years ago now on our international nurse recruitment programme."

She added: "We couldn't have got through the pandemic without the international nurses, so we'll be beholden to them for a long time."

Mrs Mann said the hospital is now looking at 'how we grow our own'.

She said this included apprenticeships and training up health care assistants as nurses.

When Cllr Laura Crane (Ettiley Heath & Wheelock, Lab) asked whether wages and retaining staff was an issue, Mrs Mann said nurses tended to stay at MCHFT, which runs Leighton Hospital at Crewe, the Victoria Infirmary in Northwich and the Elmhurst Intermediate Care Centre in Winsford.

Cllr Laura Crane

"But I have to say we are not attracting as many health care assistants. They can get better pay elsewhere."

She said healthcare assistants are just as important as registered nurses on the ward but whereas the Trust used to get at least 100 plus applicants for one healthcare job, 'we're lucky if we get 29 now'.

Cllr Steve Carter (Macclesfield Hurdsfield, Lab) thanked NHS workers for what they had done during the Covid pandemic.

"There was quite a high level of mental health issues within all Trusts across the country.

Cllr Steve Carter

"What's been put in place to help those nurses who have suffered from mental health issues?" he asked.

Mrs Mann told him: "During the pandemic we supported staff with serenity rooms, counselling services and access to food, drink."

She said lots of local businesses had been fantastic and deliveries arrived all the time.

"Now it's more around health and well-being and what we can do internally for our staff," she said.

The deputy nursing boss added: "I think what's indicative and what evidences how we've supported them – our sickness levels were not bad during the whole time."

Oliver Bennett, chief operating officer at MCHFT, said the Trust was providing a huge amount of support for the 5,500 staff.

"If you went and spoke to our colleagues I think they would endorse that. I think they would say, as an organisation, they've been supported. There are packages of support available to our staff," he said.