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Some recent nursing-school graduates who expected to fill a void at Tucson Medical Center are finding the local nurse shortage is not as severe as it once was.

TMC agreed to pay the graduates' way through a fast-track nursing program. In exchange, the graduates would work at the hospital for two years as registered nurses.

But when graduation came in December, TMC officials found they didn't need all the program's 27 registered-nurse graduates — even after paying thousands of dollars for each one's education.

With the economy in recession, TMC has followed a nationwide trend of hospitals seeing fewer patients. Plus, turnover has declined in TMC's nursing staff, so it doesn't need as many replacements, officials said.

"It's kind of a bittersweet moment because we're glad we retained nurses, but we're feeling sorry that we might not be able to place all of the graduates," said Linda Wojtowicz, TMC's vice president of clinical operations and chief nurse executive.

The graduates will interview at TMC this week to see which ones best fit into the available entry-level positions, Wojtowicz said. The number of graduates who won't get jobs as registered nurses hasn't been determined, she said, but TMC, which has about 1,000 registered nurses, doesn't have room for many.

"I know the students are certainly concerned about this," Wojtowicz said. "However, nurses are always in demand."

In May, the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, a health-care industry lobbying group, released a report that said the state would face an increasing nurse shortage in coming years. The report said the nurse-to-patient ratio in Arizona lagged behind other states.

That conclusion came after TMC, the Carondelet Health Network and University Medical Center had partnered with local colleges to more quickly train nurses and address the shortage. Carondelet and UMC have been able to find positions for their graduates as registered nurses, officials there said.

While TMC and other Tucson hospitals have increased retention and no longer have an imminent need for entry-level nurses, the state's nursing shortage still exists, said Bridget O'Gara, a spokeswoman for the lobbying group.

The economy has affected hospitals, which "aren't recession-proof," she said. Some nurses are working longer hours and picking up additional shifts, and others may be delaying retirement.

Hospitals locally and across the country are seeing fewer patients, and some in Tucson have delayed building projects and slowed their hiring of new employees.

In the long term, when the economy picks up, the nurse shortage will re-emerge because a third of the state's nurses are older than 55, O'Gara said.

When TMC started paying to put students through nursing school, it didn't anticipate a time when it wouldn't need new registered nurses.

"This particular program was put in place several years ago to fill the pipeline for years to come," Wojtowicz said. "What's happened in the last several months is the nursing shortage is not quite as severe as it was."

TMC works with the University of Arizona's College of Nursing, Grand Canyon University, Northern Arizona University and Pima Community College for its training — spending $10,000 to $30,000 on each student depending on the program.

Upon graduation the nurses must work for TMC for two years, or they're in breach of their contract and must pay the money back. But if graduates are willing to work for TMC and not offered a job as a registered nurse, they won't be in violation if they choose to work elsewhere, Wojtowicz said.

That's the bright side for the graduates who don't get nursing jobs, Wojtowicz said: Their education is complete and paid for, and they're free to work where they want.

Also, all but two of the graduates already had jobs at TMC — in positions varying from patient-care technicians to clerks — and they will be able to continue those positions until a registered-nurse spot opens up, Wojtowicz said.

She stressed that although it didn't have registered nurse positions for all the recent graduates, TMC has no plans to scrap the program.

Hospital officials will take a "critical look" at the program's cost and how many students to admit, she said. "It's very expensive for us to do this; it's several hundreds of thousands of dollars," Wojtowicz said. "And we don't want to have students in this position next year."

Carondelet and UMC also pay to put students through nursing school on the condition they work at their hospitals upon graduation. But officials from those organizations said they've been able to find registered nurse positions for their graduates.

Still, the nursing shortage overall isn't as bad as it once was, the officials said.

"We're better positioned now than we were five years ago, but we have to look at our nurses who are close to retiring," said Marty Dorgan, who's in charge of nurse retention and new-hire support at Carondelet.

Carondelet had 40 graduates from the UA's College of Nursing in August and hired 37 of them. The other three opted out of the contract — choosing not to work at one of Carondelet's four hospitals — and had to pay back the money the health network had spent on their education.

Carondelet, which employs more than 1,600 registered nurses, runs St. Joseph's, St. Mary's and Tucson Heart hospitals in Tucson and Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales.

The health network also had about two dozen graduates in December and plans to hire all of them, Dorgan said.

University Medical Center had no problem finding registered-nurse positions for the graduates who came from its program, said Jayne Southworth, UMC's human resources nursing manager. But it only had five graduates in December, she said.

UMC has nearly 1,430 registered nurses, including managers, and its only available positions are in its emergency and oncology departments, Southworth said. The hospital hires new nursing graduates about three times per year, she said.