Ambulance bosses have been forced to recruit paramedics from Poland amid an estimated nationwide shortage of 3,000 according to Tom Kelly writing in the Daily Mail.

South Central Ambulance Service, which covers Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, said it was advertising abroad to hire 220 paramedics and technicians and 70 emergency care assistants.

A spokesman for the Service said: ‘We have been carrying out some international recruitment in Poland for paramedics where their qualifications, skills and experience are very similar to our own and meet our own high standards for staff.’

The news came after the London Ambulance Service had announced it had flown to the other side of the world to hire 175 Australian paramedics to start in January because of the small number of local applicants.

A team spent ten days in Australia in September interviewing and assessing staff in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane.

It successfully recruited 175 staff after previously launching a campaign entitled ‘London, No Ordinary Challenge’ to encourage front line medics to leave Australia and work in London.

Richard Webber from the College of Paramedics estimated that there was a nationwide shortage of between 2,500 and 3,000 paramedics.

He said although ambulance services did have many foreign workers this was the first time he had heard of official recruitment drives abroad.

He said: ‘One of the main problems is insufficient people being trained and recruited.

‘There are not enough university programmes to meet the demand.

‘It is a lack of workforce planning. A lot of trusts run their own courses, train their own people themselves.

‘There is also more competition for paramedics, who are now also employed by what used to be NHS 111 (formally NHS Direct), which previously mainly took nurses.’

Paramedics in England and Wales work 37.5 hours a week, starting on a salary between £21,388 and £27,901 a year, which can rise to £34,500.

In Poland, they earn between £4,872 and £6,600 a year for a 37-hour week, although many work twice as many hours and some even triple hours to boost their pay.

South Central Ambulance Service said agency workers were currently filling gaps while they were recruiting new staff, and there was no risk to patients.