THE owners of buildings such as hotels and pubs are being called on to support former nurses returning to the profession to help fight coronavirus.

Wirral-based nurse training agency, My Nurses Life (MNL) is being inundated with requests from specialised recruitment agencies for staff for the NHS because of the coronavirus.

And to help in the fight against the killer virus, MNL is searching for extra accommodation to carry out the training necessary for the nurses to renew their lapsed registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

“We already provide accommodation for those undertaking the five day course which enables them to pass the competency exam, the OSCE,” explained owner Helen Romnes.

“But given the scale of the health threat we all face we are appealing for the owners of large properties, such as manor houses, hotels, pubs etc to offer them to the cause. Ideally we need at least one property that could accommodate 100 nurses.

“We will also need a couple of coaches or buses and volunteer car users to transport nurses from more remote areas to the Love To Care (Global) training centres we use, which are currently based in New Ferry and Bolton.

“If areas go into lockdown we can pick them up and bring them directly to the training centres.

Meanwhile we are currently writing to the Health Secretary to see if any grants are available to assist us and pay for the help.”

Helen explained that MNL, which has a network of more than 20 trainers across the UK, is also now running courses on-line which are ideal for overseas nurses who want to work here, particularly those from the Commonwealth countries and the Philippines.

“The ideal training scenario is hands-on experience in our specially equipped clinics but in these exceptional times we need to take exceptional measures which is why we have introduced the internet option.

The OSCE is sat at universities in Northampton, Oxford and Ulster and MNL is to ask the examiners to conduct it at the company’s centres so that nurses can be put into hospitals and communities within hours of passing their competency test.

“The NHS has been disgracefully short of front-line staff for far too long and even the 50,000 nurses pledged by Boris Johnson will not plug that gap but, of course, because Covoid-19 the situation has become far more urgent and desperate,” added Helen.