STAFF at Devizes Community Hospital have been praised for rising to the challenges caused by the continuing crisis in nurse recruitment in the National Health Service.

The nurses have agreed to a management plan to amalgamate Kennet and Avon wards and rename them Elizabeth ward, north and south, so they can be run as a single unit and use the limited number of staff more economically.

Phil Day, the director of community services for Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust, described the move as a philosophical change.

He said: "Staffing has been difficult over the last few years and in recent weeks we have been using one agency nurse a day to cover recent holidays and illnesses.

"Members of staff have been working very hard and are to be commended for bridging the gaps.

"Now the school holidays have come to end it should be a little easier."

The decision to amalgamate the wards had been reached by discussion with all clinical teams at the hospital.

Mr Day said: "It is a change of focus and should not mean that staff will have to work any harder than they usually do.

"I have not heard any complaints about the new system."

Ian Glendinning, the chairman of the Devizes Hospital League of Friends, said their committee had been fully briefed on the changes by Sister Letitia Ashford-Brown and were quite happy with them.

He said: "We understand that the hospital will continue to provide as good a service as it always has.

"What does concern us are the problems with recruiting."

Dr Charles Cowen, the chairman of the Devizes GPs committee, said lack of nursing staff had been a problem at the hospital for as long as six years.

He said: "Because of this, the hospital management wants nurses to be able to work on either ward and I believe that is the reason for this name change.

"The GPs are quite happy about that as long as services are retained for the benefit of Devizes people."

Concern was expressed by Devizes GPs some time ago that beds at Devizes Hospital were being used for patients from outside the area, but the committee now understands that this has to be accepted.

Dr Cowen said: "We can't justify there being empty beds at Devizes Hospital while there are people waiting elsewhere in the county."

It was also announced last week that nine beds out of the 38 at Devizes Hospital were closed while work is carried out to remove radiators.

Mr Day said: "It is part of planned maintenance work and obviously it would be impossible to have patients in that area while work was going on around them.

"But the work should be finished in the next week and the beds brought back into use."

Two nursing vacancies are currently being advertised at Devizes Hospital .

Mr Day denied that the cost of property in the county has been a factor in the difficulty of filling vacancies, as it has been for teaching jobs.

He said: "Housing is not an issue. Shortage of nursing staff is part of a national trend.

"We have always recruited nurses for Devizes Hospital from a pool of local qualified nurses and I think we have now exhausted that pool and are now having to recruit from further afield."