SWINDON'S Great Western Hospital has a thriving radiology department despite the current national shortage of qualified staff.

The Government will spend £3m targeting school-leavers and X-ray specialists who have left the NHS to tackle the national shortfall of qualified staff in the profession.

But hospital spokesman Chris Birdsall said: "We are aware there is a national shortage but we are fortunate that we do not have a shortage at the GWH. We actually have radiographers calling us asking if there are vacancies."

As many as one in four radiographer posts go unfilled in some parts of the country, though the Department of Health has no figure for the overall number of vacancies.

The GWH boasts one of only a handful of radiology departments in the UK to use a Picture Archiv-ing and Communication System, which has replaced the traditional method of using plastic film to look at patients' X-rays.

The computerised format means images are stored on computer and are available within a minute for doctors to view. There are no lost X-rays and the system will save the department £250,000 a year on film.

Director of the department Dr Alf Troughton, 49, said: "Right from day one we had what we needed and it goes to show with the right equipment and enough space you can achieve the results you want."

Dr Troughton, who joined the Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust, which runs the GWH, 10 years ago said the department had cut waiting times for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan, or MRI, from seven months to around three months in the last year.

And waiting times for ultrasounds, which are used to check a variety of conditions including pregnancy and cancer, have been reduced from three months to around six weeks.