According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), enrollment of first-year medical students rose 2.2% in 2006.  This marks the second straight year that enrollment for first-year students has risen.  The AAMC has called for a 30% increase in medical school enrollment by 2015.  Twenty-eight medical schools showed an increase in first-year enrollment by 5% this fall.

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The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employment in U.S. hospitals increased in October by 0.14% to a total of 4,459,900 hospital workers.  This marks an increase of over 6,300 workers since September.

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The Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Students has released a statement concerning Filipino nurses who took the June 2006 CGFNS exam in Manila. The exam has been tainted as a result of allegations of allegations of cheating. The CGFNS board met in October to determine whether nurses who took the exam could qualify for a VisaScreen certificate. CGFNS announced that it would accept applications, but would not make any decision on this issue at this time and would not issue certificates until it had made a decision.

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A new RAND study of immigrants and health care shows that illegal immigrants use less health care resources than their American counterparts. The study’s authors looked at immigrants in Los Angeles and have extrapolated nationally from those findings. An abstract of the study can be found at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/6/1700.

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According to a study conducted by AMN Healthcare, the nation's largest healthcare staffing firm, foreign-trained nurses represent roughly 15 percent of the newly licensed nurses in the U.S.  The study, titled The International Nurse Market: Supply Trends, focused on the five U.S. states with the largest percentage of foreign-trained nurse, California, Florida, New York, Texas and New Jersey.

Among its findings, the study found that fewer than 10,000 foreign-trained nurses passed the U.S. nurse licensing examination, known as NCLEX, in the first two quarters of 2006.  The study also found that over 100,000 foreign-trained nurses are practicing in the U.S. and that this number is expected to continue to grow.