BUTTONED up against the late winter chill, Livertine Baylon is a long way from home but glad to be in Gwent.

As one of 60 nurses from the Philippines who have been employed by Gwent Healthcare Trust, she will play a vital role in filling vacancies in the area's hospitals.

The new recruits - the second batch of nurses from the Philippines to be signed up to work in Gwent - arrived at the end of last month.

They are currently undergoing a trust induction programme involving the training they will need in order to be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

Livertine and her colleagues were working in Singapore before being taken on when the trust sent a recruitment team there late last year. They have joined a similar number of their Filipino counterparts who came to work in Gwent in May 2001.

"It is quite cold, but I am very happy to be here," said Livertine, who worked as a nurse for a year in the Philippines before spending two years in Singapore, where she worked on an orthopaedic ward.

"I know people who have come over here to work before, in places like Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham, and the feedback has been very good, so I decided to come too.

"People have been very accommodating and are much concerned with our happiness. It was a big decision to come here, but I feel that I will never regret it."

Just over half of the new nurses will be working at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport. Around 20 will be based at Nevill Hall Hospital, in Abergavenny, and the rest at Caerphilly District Miners Hospital.

Many trusts in England and Wales have gone overseas in search of staff to fill nursing vacancies. In Wales alone there are around 1,000 medical, surgical and other nursing posts unfilled.

Despite the 2001 intake of Filipino nurses, vacancies in Gwent remained around the 200 mark. There are still not enough newly qualified nurses coming from the training schools, and recruitment and retention remains a problem in many parts of the UK.

The newcomers should ease the vacancy problem and cut reliance on the use of costly agency staff.

"The successful applicants are of a very high quality. We are sure they will make a big contribution," said Tracy Myhill, the trust's director of personnel.

PICTURE: Filipino nurse Livertine Baylon