NURSES, midwives and nursing students from Kendal's Westmorland General Hospital and across Morecambe Bay will be made “ward ready” at a new training centre.

The former staff social club in the grounds of the Royal Lancaster Infirmary has been transformed into an education venue for “home-grown” nurses and colleagues from overseas.

Once a popular spot for socialising, the club was owned and run by hospital staff but closed in 2015.

Now, club staff and trustees have gifted the ownership to the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, so it can be used to help train nurses and improve patient care at Kendal, Barrow-in-Furness and Lancaster.

The fully refurbished venue is described as “a first for the trust”, with a large open-plan teaching room.

Joann Morse, the trust’s director of nursing, praised the “extremely generous gift” and said it would have a “meaningful legacy”.

“The new centre will allow us to bring our much-needed home-grown nurses and nurses we recruit from overseas through the centre and ensure they are ready to be allocated to caring for patients on our wards as quickly as possible,” she said.

“The capital services team have done a fantastic job and it’s amazing to see how the old social club has now been given a new lease of life which will support nurse education and training and, ultimately, benefit patient care for years to come.”