Hereford County Hospital's expertise as a training ground for doctors of the future is being recognised with the hope they will also remember and return or recommend their colleagues to do so.

Hereford Hospitals Trust is now a teaching trust of the University of Birmingham with an agreement with Birmingham Medical School in which a dozen fifth year students spend eight weeks in the hospital.

They are allocated to most specialities, teamed with a consultant and encouraged to attend ward rounds, clinics, teaching sessions and lectures with the rest of the surgical and medical team.

The trust hopes the students will spread the message that Hereford hospital is a good place to work and will help hospital staff keep up to date .

Another important spin off is Birmingham Medical School's confidence in County Hospital consultants, doctors and nurses to educate the students and provide the right facilities.

This includes hospital accommodation and an allocation of £285,000 from the NHS capital resources Birmingham and Black Country Workforce has allowed the trust to do that.

It has funded the refurbishment of the Gwyndra Downs building for the students during their stay and the building was officially opened last week.

In the centre of the hospital complex, it was formerly accommodation for nurses and got its name from a much-respected sister tutor who served in both the County and General Hospitals and continued to teach into the 1960s.

The refurbished building was officially opened by Meriel Oliver, wife of Hereford's retiring bishop, who recently retired as a non executive director of the trust.