For years, the Imperial Valley’s largest hospital has grappled not only with the national nursing shortage but with a lack of Spanish-speaking nurses able to communicate easily with the Latino patients who fill most of the beds.

The solution may be right next door, in Mexico.

“For the valley, nothing makes more sense,” said Tomás Virgen, assistant chief nursing officer at the 163-bed El Centro Regional Medical Center. After years of searching as far as the Philippines for nurses, El Centro Regional has begun recruiting in the Baja California capital of Mexicali, a dozen miles south.

Potentially, an unlimited number of Mexican nurses could work in the United States under a special provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but few are trying, and only a small portion of those have been successful.

Advocates say Mexican nurses could help fill a critical need for bilingual and bicultural medical personnel in regions with large immigrant populations. More than 80 percent of patients at El Centro Regional are Spanish-speaking, for example, and most are originally from Mexico.

An infusion of Mexican nurses also could help alleviate a particularly acute shortage of registered nurses in California, where the number of RNs per capita is the lowest in the United States, advocates say. One study shows California with 622 nurses for every 100,000 residents, compared with the national average of 787.  Read more