ORLANDO, Fla. -- Looking for employment? Florida Hospital is hiring nurses and recently, they’ve looked at the pool of talent coming from Puerto Rico.

  • Florida Hospital hires nurses from Puerto Rico

Since Hurricane Maria, the hospital has hired more than 60 nurses from the island, who’ve come to Florida in search of better opportunities.

''Right now in my country,  there’s a lot of things going on that are really disorganized in that way. So that’s why, we, a lot of professionals, not even nurses, therapists, doctors, other professionals, are leaving the island right now,'' said Esteban Torres Pabón, who moved from the island and is now a nurse at Florida Hospital.

Torres Pabón had been already recruited by the hospital but before a final interview, Hurricane Maria put everything on hold.  ''I was so nervous for what was happening in my country at the time,'' he remembers.

For weeks Torres Pabón didn’t have signal in the island and was stuck, then the recruiter called. ''She was asking me if I was ok, if my family my home and I told her, I just need the job, I need this, I need that,'' he laughed.

The 27 year old had been working at a hospital in Caguas, Puerto Rico at the time where resources were scarce but patients were many. ''As a nurse, you want to move the hospital, the island, for your patients but you can’t.''

Florida Hospital is still recruiting nurses for all their hospitals.  For Torres Pabón, it’s been a blessing as he not only gets a bigger opportunity to grow professionally but also bring diversity to a growing Latino community.

''You get to see on their face, when you say how can I help you, hablo español, they change their faces,'' he said.