Hospital staff will be swapping the wards for supermarket aisles to try and tackle an increasing shortage of nurses in York.

Nursing staff from York District Hospital will be setting out their stall in branches of Tesco and Sainsbury's in an attempt to persuade those who have given up the profession to come back to work.

Unions are supporting the move but say it does not go far enough.

The recruitment drive is to take place next week - National Nurses Week - and advice and information will be on hand.

Anthea Gledhill, nursing development co-ordinator, said: "Although staff turnover in York is less than elsewhere in the country, over the past few years we have begun to experience difficulty recruiting locally.

"We currently have vacancies for nurses, two years ago we would probably have been able to fill these posts through local advertisements, but frequently we are having to recruit outside the area."

Edna Mulhearn, chairman of the York branch of Unison (health), said: "We always found it quite easy to get bank nurses but now there is even a shortage of them.

"What they really need to get nurses back into the profession is more flexible hours and more pay.

"The Government did give pay rises to some grades and we welcomed that but why did these nurses leave in the first place?

"They left because of the hours and pay and because staff shortages put pressure on other nurses - the pay hasn't gone up to the extent that it is attractive."

Anthea Gledhill said the idea behind the supermarket recruitment was to provide information about returning to nursing in a venue which most people had to visit during the week.

Nurses from the trust will be at Tesco supermarkets in Selby and Clifton Moor, York, and at Sainsbury's at Monks Cross, York, on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, May 12, 14 and 15 between 10am and 6pm.

An open day is being held at Harrogate District Hospital on Wednesday, May 19 for former nurses in North Yorkshire keen to return

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.