SOUTHEND Hospital says it is doing all it can to stem a high turnover of medical staff after it was revealed 84 doctors had left in the past two years.

The figure is a rise on the two years prior to that when 61 junior and senior doctors left the trust.

In recent years the hospital has struggled to recruit doctors, especially in stressful and highly specialised areas such as A&E, and so has relied on filling gaps with costly agency staff.

This has contributed greatly to the hospital’s £9.8million budget deficit, but Sarah Daniel, interim associate director of HR at the hospital, said they were now on top of the issue.

She said: “A resignation is where a person leaves for any reason other than end of contract, dismissal or death, and may be for a number of reasons, including for ill health, retirement, education, relocation or transfer to another organisation. Over the same period we recruited 112 doctors, including recruiting to permanent posts in difficult to recruit areas such as A&E.

“We have seen our recruitment and retention of doctors rise across the hospital in the last year, with a lower turnover of medical staff than we saw in the previous year.”

However, the recruitment drive has come at a cost, with the hospital paying a recruitment agency more than £100,000 to hire 12 permanent A&E doctors.

The hospital paid £9,600 to specialist recruitment consultant Remedium Partners for each of the experienced registrars it hired over the past year – with a total bill of £115,200.

The hospital says the move will help to save money in the long run.

A freedom of information request also revealed Basildon Hospital has lost 70 qualified doctors during the same two-year period.

But the hospital said it was unconcerned at the turnover.

A spokesman said: “Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust employs more than 4,000 members of staff with a medical workforce of more than 500. It is inevitable that in any large organisation like ours, a proportion of staff will move on to new opportunities elsewhere.

“We are proud of the training and education we offer our doctors – especially during the early stages of their career – which prepares them for more senior roles.

Sometimes that will be with our trust and sometimes that might be elsewhere in the NHS when positions at other trusts become vacant.”

Both hospital’s have junior doctors who cost the taxpayer up to £610,000 to train.

Increasing numbers of doctors are deserting the NHS for a better life in Australia and NewZealand, figures reveal.

A major report from the General Medical Council last year showed an exodus of doctors was forcing the NHS to import staff from southern and eastern Europe.

The figures showed the number of UK doctors applying for certificates to work abroad has risen by a fifth since 2008, to nearly 3,000 a year.