Airedale Hospital is looking to recruit German doctors in a bid to bring its clinical teams up to strength.

Consultants from the Steeton hospital attended a job fair in Berlin to assess the level of interest from German doctors.

Unlike the UK, Germany has a surplus of both consultants and GPs due to the rationalisation of its health service.

The team from Airedale included senior personnel officer Kathy Warburton, Dr Guy Porter from the hospital's radiology department, Dr Claire Chambers from the psychiatric department and Dr Philip Cave from anaesthetics.

Executive deputy director of personnel Liz Jones said: "The team went over to Germany to talk to people who have expressed an interest in working in Britain.

"They used the trip to discuss what posts are available at Airedale and to get a feel for the level of interest.

"We have a very good retention of consultants at Airedale, but we have expanded a number of consultancy posts and there is generally a national shortfall of medical consultants.

"At Airedale we are only interested in recruiting high calibre people."

The campaign to attract German doctors to the area has been led by the Northern and Yorkshire Regional Office.

Advertisements for hospital consultants have already appeared in the German medical press.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "We are committed to increasing the numbers of doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals working in the NHS in order to expand, particularly in key areas such as coronary heart disease and cancer care.

"Much of this expansion will come through an increase in training places - both undergraduate and postgraduate - but because training takes time we are also looking to recruit highly skilled people from abroad."

Representatives from 20 NHS trusts from across the Northern and Yorkshire region attended the job fair.