Desperate hospital bosses are planning radical measures to lure nurses away from other trusts to plug their staffing gap.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust wants to fill the equivalent of about 300 full-time vacancies for nurses and midwives and cut its £600,000 bill for agency workers.

One option being considered is sending a personal note to every registered nurse within 20 miles – which would include those at the beleaguered Medway Maritime Hospital.

Sweeteners include “golden hello” payments, iPads, gym membership and subsidised housing.

Loyalty bonuses could also be paid to the existing 2,104 nurses and midwives, along with better overtime rates.

In his report to the trust’s board, Paul Bentley, head of workforce and communications, said: “We have had recent success with a local job fair for nursing staff and plan to run similar initiatives throughout next year to attract staff and capitalise naturally on our current neighbour’s situation.”

There are 195 whole time equivalent vacancies across the two sites at Maidstone Hospital and Tunbridge Wells Hospital at Pembury.

But the trust would like to recruit more to compensate for the high turnover rates.

Students training with the trust could be given iPads, a bursary of £1,000 and guaranteed employment once their training is complete.

Other ideas include paying new staff a “golden hello” of £1,200, speeding up recruitment from an average of 18 weeks to 16 and even offering subsidised housing.

The trust also wants to cut sickness. A 1% reduction would save £50,000 a month on cover for absent staff.

Mr Bentley said the trust needed to be more creative to attract staff.

He said: “To deliver this level of recruitment, even with greater use of social media and recruitment campaigns, the national shortage of registered nurses being experienced across the UK necessitates greater creativity and tenacity than has hitherto been exercised.”

The trust has a total of 469 vacancies, but is planning to remove back office roles in favour of protecting frontline jobs.

In 2012 it asked all staff to consider taking voluntary redundancy in a bid to save money, but only a handful of staff applied, and even fewer were accepted.