SOME of the foreign nurses recruited by East Lancashire’s hospitals “thought they were coming to London”, according to health chief Christine Pearson.

The Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals have now recruited more than 40 nurses from mainland Europe since ramping up their recruitment programme last year.

MORE TOP STORIES:

But in December, the Lancashire Telegraph revealed that around a quarter of the 26 European nurses who had then been recruited had already left the trust, less than a year after joining.

Most of the foreign recruits have been Italian, but others have come from Romania and Portugal.

At a recent board meeting at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, chief nurse Christine Pearson said: “When they came to England they felt they were coming to maybe London, so that was one of the issues we had to work on.”

But she gave assurances that foreign recruits have been given adequate time to settle in before starting work on the wards, and that their language skills were up to scratch.

She added: “I had a patient say to me ‘you’re not from round here’, so even if you live 25 miles down the road in Manchester such as me, you’ll always have language barriers.”