Nurses are in short supply, training programs have long waiting lists, hospitals are poaching on each others' staffs and California has new minimum-staffing laws that will make it all worse. Somebody should get creative about this problem.

Somebody did. Two of Long Beach's leading institutions, Memorial Medical Center/Children's Hospital and Cal State University Long Beach, have teamed up to double the number of students in the fully booked CSULB nursing program.

Memorial is putting up $10 million and the university $5 million to create a five-year satellite campus at the hospital. The program will use a sort of case-study method based on actual medical incidents, mimicked by a computerized mannequin that speaks, breathes, has a heartbeat and pulse, and responds realistically to procedures such as resuscitation, catheterization and the search for a nice, plump vein for a needle.

The facility also will provide state-of-the-art practice areas for the care of infants, the elderly, and general critical care. The hospital is the second biggest on the West Coast and one of the few anywhere with adult, pediatric, cancer, heart, rehabilitation, emergency and trauma center, all on the same site.

Cal State Long Beach already has 900 students in pre-nursing, baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs, but classes are full. The new program eventually will provide for an additional 108 graduating nurses a year.

What's in it for Memorial? The medical center will offer to pay for all books and tuition to anyone who completes the program and joins its staff for two years. That's optional, obviously, but between that option and the training experience, Memorial, which at the moment has 150 openings for nurses, expects to gain an edge in recruiting.

The need for more nurses is critical. There is a direct correlation between the number of hospital patients per nurse and the patient survival rate.

Recruiting pressures cause higher turnover, and work pressures caused by staff shortages increase the likelihood nurses will leave the field in frustration. New mandated minimums are putting more demands on the system.

Memorial's CEO Byron Schweigert deserves credit for risking resources on an innovative program that could end up doing more for the common good than for the hospital's own needs. Cal State Long Beach's president Robert C. Maxson, whose campus already is stretched by mounting enrollment and declining help from the state, could have just looked the other way, but didn't.

They are providing the sort of leadership and cooperation that will resolve the nursing shortage, as well as other grievous problems in health care and education. Hospitals and colleges elsewhere should follow their lead.