Foreign-educated doctors train as nurses in Fla. (500 applicants and growing).

Florida International University has launched an innovative program to train foreign-educated physicians to become nurses.

The program has been 3 years in development and is seen as one solution to the state s nursing shortage, said Divina Grossman, Ph.D., director of the university's school of nursing in Miami. Many of the foreign-educated physicians who have entered the nursing program were already working in hospitals as medical assistants, nurse assistants, or phlebotomists. Most of those enrolled were trained as physicians in Cuba and are over 35 years of age. The program, in fact, is the result of an initial request by a group of Cuban-trained doctors for retraining in nursing.

The program is being funded by four hospitals in Miami and Fort Lauderdale that have allocated a total of $600,000 in funding, which includes scholarships for students. Training is accelerated compared with standard nursing training. Scholarships are often rewarded on the contingency that graduates commit to working for 2 years at the sponsoring hospitals.

The nursing shortage is particularly acute in Florida, where the vacancy rate for registered nurse positions is 16%, compared with a nationwide rate of 10%. "There are 26,000 RNs needed in Florida right now," Dr. Grossman said.

The program's first 40 students started training in May. Students follow the same course of study as other nursing students at Flu, but are given credit for some courses taken abroad, such as client assessment, pharmacology, and pathophysiology. Training is validated by performance on "challenge examinations."

The accelerated program takes 2 years. Upon completion, graduates ...