By Karen Gutierrez
The Cincinnati Enquirer

EDGEWOOD - With a 36-bed addition to open soon, St. Elizabeth Medical Center needs more nurses. Thursday, it agreed to spend $1.25 million toward getting some.

The money will be given over five years to Gateway Community & Technical College, which will begin offering an associate's degree in nursing this fall. St. Elizabeth's investment will be used to hire faculty and develop courses.

Gateway expects to produce about 40 registered nurses a year. They will get clinical experience at St. Elizabeth's, and many also will receive tuition scholarships from the hospital. In exchange, students will agree to work there for a period of time after graduation.

The partnership - the largest yet in Gateway's two-year history - was announced Thursday by Gateway President Ed Hughes and St. Elizabeth Executive Vice President Marc Hoffman.

"This will be a tremendous opportunity for people of all ages in our community to get into nursing and enjoy what is an exciting, challenging and noble profession," Hoffman said.

To compete for employees, hospitals must offer good working conditions, which means hiring enough nurses to keep patient care manageable, said Jane Swaim, the vice president of nursing at St. Elizabeth.

In Greater Cincinnati last summer, hospitals had a 14 percent nursing vacancy rate, or about 1,000 unfilled positions. Nationwide, as baby boomers get older, the country will face a shortage of 800,000 nurses by 2020, the federal government says.

St. Elizabeth is attacking the problem on several fronts. In addition to the agreement with Gateway, it offers tuition scholarships to high-school students pursuing nursing careers. It provides refresher courses to retired nurses who wish to rejoin the work force. And it offers accelerated nursing classes to people who already have degrees in health-related fields.

At Thursday's presentation before an audience of about 100, Kentucky Education Secretary Virginia Fox praised the spirit of cooperation between colleges and businesses in Northern Kentucky.

"You all have learned that you give up a little to get a lot. Not many people in the world know that," Fox said.

E-mail kgutierrez@enquirer.com