Two health trust officers have returned from China having spent five days vetting nurses for jobs at Airedale Hospital.

Up to 23 nurses, currently working at a university hospital in Whuan, central China, could get places at Airedale.

The hospital is facing a recruitment shortage -- it has 15 vacancies for registered nurses.

Melvin Birks, the trust's acute services divisional manager and critical care service manager Steve Tomlinson, have spent five days in the country interviewing potential recruits.

Their trip was part of a joint project with the University of Bradford, which is due to send academics to China to run intensive English teaching lessons.

In September, Airedale nurse Sally Moore will also spend six months in Whuan honing the potential recruits' language skills and instructing them in the nursing methods of a British hospital.

Mr Tomlinson said the trip had turned out to be vital in ensuring the scheme was successful.

Nurses at universities in Nanchang and Guangzhu -- from which they had originally intended to recruit -- had proved not to be suitable enough because of their standard of English.

But towards the end of the five-day trip the two men were introduced to the president of the university at Whuan, where the nurses had much higher levels of English.

"It was fabulous because on interviewing them their English was excellent," said Mr Tomlinson.

"We intend to take up to 20 nurses. But we will be flexible. If only 15 are suitable we will stick to that number but we would go up to 23.

"It was a very successful trip. It could have been potentially disastrous. We could have ended up letting the nurses and our hospital down.

"We have a responsibility to patients who come to this hospital and the quality and standard of the nursing staff.

"The Chinese nurses -- all of them women -- were desperately keen to get on the scheme," he said.

The project was being sponsored by the Chinese government, which was keen to develop links with the UK and to open its medical development to the West, he added.

The Chinese nurses will spend six months in Airedale working at the hospital and aiming at being registered with the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council. They are due to arrive in early November.

They will be found accommodation together in Keighley.

*Airedale NHS Trust has already been successful in training about 18 nurses from India, who were registered with the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council.