THE first of a new wave of Spanish doctors to work in the North-East has arrived.

Dr Belen Carsi, who was pictured talking to Health Secretary Alan Milburn during his recruitment drive in Spain earlier this month, has been meeting her new colleagues at the University Hospital of Hartlepool.

She is the first of about 130 of her compatriots who are beginning new careers in Britain's short-staffed National Health Service.

Mr Milburn is hoping to recruit at least 1,000 doctors and 2,000 nurses from overseas within four years.

With temperatures in the North-East hovering around freezing this week, Dr Carsi will have been advised to wrap up warm.

In her home country, temperatures are in the fifties or low sixties Fahrenheit.

Dr Carsi, who is understood to have accepted a position as a locum associate specialist in orthopaedics, will not be treating patients until she has settled into her new surroundings.

A spokeswoman for the trust said a Press conference about their new recruit was planned in the near future.

It was unclear whether the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust is planning to lay on classes to help Dr Carsi understand the local accent.

Hospitals in the North-West of England have begun offering dialect advice to their Spanish recruits.