Tony Blair today heard at first hand the problems facing the NHS during a visit to Heath Secretary Alan Milburn's constituency hospital.

The Prime Minister was on a fact-finding mission at Darlington Memorial Hospital when he met a consultant who had come in on his day off because of recruitment problems. Mr Blair was also confronted on nurse shortages during his visit.

Consultant urologist Simon Fulford, 37, was first to highlight recruitment problems as he greeted Mr Blair during a clinic at the new £460,000 Endoscopy Unit.

The unit was opened last July to provide a one-stop service designed to cut waiting times and the number of hospital visits patients need to make.

Mr Blair heard about the benefits the new unit had brought, but when he asked Mr Fulford what more could be done, he was told of ongoing staff shortages.

Mr Fulford told the Prime Minister: ''We always need more resources and more money. For instance today I am not supposed to be here, someone is on holiday so I have to come in.

''Funding and resources always help and they are helping in this (endoscopy unit) instance.''

As the Prime Minister continued his visit, Mr Fulford later said that the hospital had been given one month's notice that a replacement would be needed to run today's urology clinic but had still been unable to fill the space due to chronic skills shortages.

Mr Blair later chaired a discussion with health workers where again the problems of staff shortages arose.

The Prime Minister told the assembled medical staff: ''We are anxious to get some feedback from the front line.''

Maggie Donaghue, a general surgery ward sister, said: ''We have big problems at the moment with recruitment.

''We know you are doing a lot for us but it is the problem we have now. There are nurses training but we need the nurses now.''

Mr Blair said: ''It will take some years to get the full number of nurses in but, in the meantime, we have got to try to bring people back into nursing.

''Where we can there will be people from abroad ... to fill the gap.

''We need to get the resources where we can to tide us over until the nurses come through the system.''

Patients put across the positive side of the new unit during the visit.

Sydney Liddle, had been using the service both before the new unit was opened and after.

He told the Prime Minister that his visits would take up to a day before the new unit was opened and now that time had been cut to an hour.

He said: ''It is so quick, so fast, I get out very sharpish.'' Irene Wolfe was in the waiting room before an X-ray.

Before the unit's arrival she would have to book into the ward but now it was a 10 minute wait and the X-ray results were received almost instantly.

She said: ''It is a lot quicker and more relaxing.''