COLUMN: Medical and nursing workforce to be bolstered and boosted

Firstly, we have been delighted to welcome our doctors of the future, who have just started their studies as part of the first cohort of undergraduate medical students at the new Lincoln Medical School.

This is fantastic news for the county as a whole and marks a new era for the local NHS workforce. As an innovative partnership between the universities of Lincoln and Nottingham, the new medical school will help to deliver first class medical education across the county.

Until now Lincolnshire was the largest English county without a medical school of its own. Once at full capacity, Lincoln Medical School will provide training to around 400 medical students at any one time.

Students will work towards the world-class BMBS Medicine degree at the University of Lincoln, train in all our hospitals and, hopefully, go forward to work in our local NHS and care for the people of Lincolnshire.

To finally have this facility in our county is a major achievement and a real selling point for Lincolnshire, which can now boast about having some of the finest medical training facilities in the country.

Hand in hand with this is the exciting news that 85 newly qualified nurses have just started at ULHT. This is always a great time of year, when we welcome the latest cohort of freshly trained nurses into out hospitals, eager to get to work and help make a difference to the patients they will be caring for.

What makes things even better is that they have specifically chosen ULHT as their place of work, having experienced placements with us throughout their studies – their commitment is truly valued.

It is widely acknowledged that we have our recruitment challenges at ULHT, particularly with regards to nursing, with a number of vacancies across our wards and departments.

These new recruits will help us make further progress on our journey of improvement to make sure we are providing the best possible care we can to all the families we have the pleasure of looking after in Lincolnshire.

Andrew Morgan is CEO at the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust