TWO Italian GPs have swapped the Mediterranean sunshine for the banks of the Mersey.

Experienced doctors Alberto Ambrossini and Italo Pulin have joined Halton Primary Care Trust.

Dr Pulin will be based in Castlefields Practice, Runcorn, and Dr Ambrossini will work in West Bank and Ditton Practice in Widnes.

They arrived at the end of May and will be in practice 'learning the ropes' and treating patients from mid-June.

They are part of seven Italian GPs recruited for different parts of Cheshire and Merseyside.

The doctors have already undergone formal language assessment by a team from the University of Liverpool who studied both their written and spoken English during a visit to Rome last November.

All of the GPs have a high standard of English but will continue to receive linguistic support from the University for the first six months of their stay.

Dave Watson, international recruitment locality co-ordinator for Cheshire and Merseyside Strategic Health Authority, said:

"The doctors are going to practices which have had vacancies for a while which could not be filled through traditional means.

"It will take the GPs a while to get used to the British system but once they have settled in they will have a huge impact on the day to day running of these practices.

"Their arrival should relieve the strain on existing GPs. This will have a knock-on effect giving doctors more time to study, and, importantly, more time with their patients."