MEDICAL students who have arrived in Morecambe Bay are predicted to bring huge benefits to the NHS.

The 42 University of Liverpool students are to be found working with GPs and health centres across the Bay, including South Lakeland, and at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Barrow's Furness General Hospital.

A health service boss this week said that having the students in the Bay would provide a recruitment boost, and bring many other advantages.

The chief executive of Morecambe Bay Hospitals NHS Trust, Ian Cumming, said that the medical students would provide a pool of doctors for the future.

"One of the biggest challenges in the hospitals' trust in the next three to five years is recruitment of medical staff, mainly because of the projected growth, and we are competing with the rest of the world.

"We know that people who train with us come back and work here."

Mr Cumming said that having large numbers of medical students in the Bay for the first time would also ensure that the trust's doctors would be up-to-date with all the latest technology and developments because they would be prepared to be able to answer the students' questions.

The students would also carry out research which could be of benefit to the trust in the future.

The arrival of the students - who could number up to 150 by 2007 has also prompted a name change for the trust. By next year, the trust will be known by its new name of the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust.

Mr Cumming said: "People may see it as playing around with names but I think it's of major significance in terms of securing services for the future."

The students are also benefiting from a new £2 million education centre.

Professor Paul Wellings, the vice chancellor of Lancaster University, and Professor Kelvin Everest, the pro-vice chancellor of the University of Liverpool, officially opened the new centre at the RLI.

The centre houses a library, tutorial rooms, a lecture theatre and clinical skills laboratories, which will be used to the benefit of all trust employees and colleagues from elsewhere in the NHS.

To mark both the official opening and to formally recognise the collaboration between the University of Liverpool, Lancaster University and the trust, the first Morecambe Bay symposium on medical and dental education followed the opening ceremony. The event aimed to recognise the increasing role that the trust, in collaboration with the universities, is playing in both undergraduate and post-graduate edu-cation.

The University of Liverpool awards the de-grees for under-graduate medical students and is now working in close collaboration with Lancaster University, which is providing non-clinical special study modules.

In his opening address, Prof Wellings announced that the university had made provision in its capital budget programme to fund a new centre for medical education on the university's Bailrigg campus.

Also at the official opening, it was announced that Dr Mike Flanagan has been appointed to the post of director of medical and dental education.

Dr Flanagan will be responsible for educational leadership for the present and future needs of medical students, training grade doctors within the trust, and those performing clinical teaching roles.