Nurses are staying away from Oxford, causing a new threat to patient care and a rise in expensive agency staff.

While other regions are slowly filling their vacancies, hospitals in Oxfordshire now face an unexpected bill of £200,000 for agency staff.

A survey by the NHS Executive shows that more than half the 1,450 vacancies reported in March across the south-east have now been filled.

But the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust has only filled an eighth of its 198 vacancies, despite a long-running scheme to encourage staff back to the NHS. And the figure has now risen to 310, with the trust's recent adoption of the Radcliffe Infirmary.

Hospitals, including the John Radcliffe and the Churchill in Oxford and The Horton in Banbury, have been forced to use agency staff. But the emergency measure has rung up a £200,000 bill for the last five months.

Nurse retention and recruitment manager Steve McManus said the trust found it difficult to hire staff.

"There is simply not a big enough national pool of recruits and we are all competing together, but there are a number of factors that cause nurses to stay away from Oxford.

"The city is seen as an expensive place to live. You get London weighting in London, and prices are often cheaper in the north.

"We also have relatively low unemployment in Oxford, which means we don't have a local pool of recruits."

Mr McManus said the trust was still promoting return-to-work courses in collaboration with the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, the Oxfordshire Community NHS Trust, Oxfordshire Mental Health NHS Trust, Oxfordshire Health Authority and Oxford Brookes University School of Healthcare.

The scheme has included countywide roadshows, advertising and a dedicated hotline. The next open day is at the John Radcliffe Hospital on November 30.

The number of vacancies means one in ten of the 3,000 nursing positions within the trust is unfilled.

The trust has even tried recruiting staff from the other side of the world. Since August, it has brought in 176 foreign staff, including 109 Australians, plus nurses from Singapore and New Zealand.

Story date: Saturday 20 November

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.