A NURSING recruitment strategy at Salisbury District Hospital is looking to mitigate fears of a future shortfall due to the impact of Brexit and a fall in graduate applications in England.

Highlighting fears at a Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust board meeting earlier this month, non-executive director, Professor Jane Reid, asked directors: "What sort of strategic conversations are going on with future education providers over future recruitment, given they're reporting nationally a 24 per cent drop off in graduate applications.

"I'm very concerned with the impact of Brexit on the likely European workforce and what this means for us in the longer term in meeting nursing shortfall - it's going to be really significant for us."

The hospital was recently named by an independent centre for research as one of the 20 NHS Trusts most “at risk” in the country of a nursing shortage due to Brexit and an ageing population. Around eight per cent of nurses at the hospital are from the EU.

In England, new figures show almost 10,000 fewer would-be nurses have applied for courses linked to the profession after a government decision to remove NHS bursaries.

Responding to Ms Reid's question, nursing director Lorna Wilkinson said: "In the last week we have had a pause and stock take on our recruitment strategy, looking at domestic, EU and non-EU recruitment.

"In domestic recruitment, as headlined in the news, there has been a drop off in applications but what we need to be aware of is that general nursing is one of the most over-subscribed courses anyway.

"In terms of what impact that will have in terms of people who actually come through into training posts, that's unknown at the moment. It may not make much difference to how many nursing students we have, or it may, - it's a bit of an unknown at this point in the year."

She added: "As a fast follower of the the nursing associate programs, we've got eight students recruited who will be starting that program in March and we are also talking to further education providers around the apprenticeship schemes which will go right through from nursing assistants through to registered nurse. That's quite a huge and detailed task but we have already started having conversations with one of the universities."

* A new cohort of 11 EU nurses started at the hospital in January from Greece, Spain and Italy, together with four non-EU nurses.