The 12 nurses - from the Philippines, India and Bangladesh - join 13 already working at Kettering General Hospital.

All of them bring years of experience in hospitals around the world to their new jobs.

The hospital's assistant director of nursing, Kathy Harvey, said it was a struggle relying on home-grown nurses to meet demand.

"The profession is not as attractive to young people at it used to be.

"We are quite lucky at Kettering in that we have a lot of students who are coming through the system.

"But the demands on the health service are so great and we are having to expand our service to meet that demand - and there are not enough ready-made nurses to do that at this time."