HOSPITAL bosses have been on a shopping trip to Spain in a bid to fill more than 100 nursing jobs for an expanding North-East heart unit.

Eleven Spanish nurses have been recruited by the South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust as part of ambitious expansion plans.

But many more are needed to staff the cardiothoracic unit at James Cook University Hospital, which is being extended as part of the Government's push to improve treatment for heart patients.

When they arrive on April 16 they will be the first Spanish nurses to arrive in the Northern and Yorkshire region. Most of the recent Spanish arrivals are working in the North-West.

The North-East already has the region's first Spanish hospital doctor to be recruited as part of the recent Government initiative.

And later this year a team from South Tees will travel to Berlin in search of German consultants, as part of the same initiative.

Spanish medic Dr Belen Carsi, who arrived in the UK three months ago, is now at the University Hospital of Hartlepool.

Most of the Spanish nurses are earmarked for the Middlesbrough hospital's expanding heart unit.

And with more than 100 new nurses needed to staff the unit over the next 12 months it is likely that the Teesside NHS trust will soon be back in Spain looking for more staff.

Anne Sutcliffe, recruitment consultant for South Tees Hospitals said the need for more heart nurses was the driving force behind the trip to Spain a few weeks ago.

"The reason we went to Spain is because of our expansion plans, particularly in the cardiothoracic unit where we need to recruit more than 100 nurses in the next 12 months," she said.

Some of the nurses hired in Spain already have cardiothoracic experience while others will follow an intensive training course.

The Teesside team were able to impress candidates with the plans to transform the James Cook hospital site into a regional super-hospital.

A language specialist from Liverpool University accompanied the recruitment teams from NHS hospitals.

Mrs Sutcliffe said she was "impressed" by the linguistic skills of the nurses they have hired. "They speak English very well, now they will have to learn Middlesbrough," she joked.