MIAMI — When Tony Noya and Peggy deCardenas moved to South Florida, they came with big dreams. After all, both had spent nearly a third of their lives planning to be doctors, attending college and medical schools in Cuba and Africa.

But almost immediately, both hit a wall that some foreign-trained doctors — mostly from the Caribbean and South America — have been running into for decades: daunting exams required by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, followed by mandatory training under U.S. standards, followed by a final three-part licensing exam.

Noya and deCardenas familiarized themselves with the exams and knew they would be deficient in some areas, including math and English language skills. But they couldn't afford to pay for remedial classes, so their medical careers languished.

They worked in retail stores and as medical records clerks. The closest that deCardenas came to medical work was drawing blood at a small clinic.

That might have been as far as Noya and deCardenas could take their careers had they not found the Foreign Physician-to-Nursing Program, a charter program at Florida International University that transitions foreign-educated doctors to registered nurses.

"I've heard so many stories like theirs, having to work as cab drivers and grocery store baggers and whatever they can find," said Divina Grossman, dean of the Florida International University's School of Nursing, which has operated Physician-to-Nursing for four years.

"There's nothing wrong with those jobs. But when you've worked so hard to build a career that many feel is a calling as much as an occupation, you can understand how disheartening it could be."

The program is fueled by the growing shortage of registered nurses in the United States —currently more than 100,000 such jobs are vacant, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That dovetailed with Grossman's desire to help foreign-trained physicians who couldn't pass the licensing exams. But even Grossman was unaware of how many people would respond to the program.

"Honestly, I was aware of this problem, the plight of these people, but not the extent of it," she said. "So I called two Cuban doctors in Miami, who I knew very well. I left them a message asking if they knew of anyone like this, and then I went on vacation."

When she returned a week later, Grossman's secretary presented her with about 350 telephone messages from people interested in the program.

Since it began in May 2002, nearly 1,000 foreign-trained doctors have applied to the program, Grossman said. Fewer than half made it through the screening process, which requires a level of English language proficiency, as well as basic reading and math skills.

So tough is the screening that the first class had only 40 people. By the third class, that number had risen to just 100.

For Noya, 35, and deCardenas, 29, the program revived hopes for a medical career.

Long before they met and married in Miami, they were on parallel paths.

They grew up in the same town, Santiago de Cuba, and attended the same high school, although in different years. After deciding as teenagers that they wanted to be doctors, they both were accepted into the same medical school, Universidad de Medicina de Santiago de Cuba.

All the while, neither knew the other existed.

Noya spent six years at the Cuban medical school, before leaving in 1994, to finish his studies at the Universidad de Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique, where his epidemiologist father had spent 20 years working with HIV/AIDS patients.

As deCardenas was just settling into med school in Santiago de Cuba, Noya was just wrapping up a yearlong stint as a public health officer in Mozambique for Doctors Without Borders, and in 1997 was moving to Miami with a plan to practice medicine.

"Almost right away I became saddened because I found it was an impossible task to meet all the requirements to be a doctor here," Noya said. Aside from meeting more stringent U.S. medical requirements, Noya's English back then was barely conversational and his math skills were deficient.

While Noya was struggling with the realities of the U.S. medical system, deCardenas was still in medical school, but was convinced Cuba was not where she wanted to practice.

"This is not a career about money," she said. "but you expect doctors to receive very good compensation, no? Well, in Cuba a very good physician, with experience — years of experience — might be lucky to earn $30 per month."

When she found she wouldn't be allowed to choose her own specialty and would be told where she would practice, deCardenas flew to Miami in 2000, a year after she graduated, and never left.

Unable to get licensed, deCardenas found work as a medical recorder and drawing patients' blood at an AIDS clinic near her home in Kendall, Fla.

"I never got extremely discouraged," she said. "I believe strongly in my situation here, regardless of my job, is better than the life I would have had in Cuba."

In 2002, deCardenas asked a friend how she might get her career back. That was when she was introduced to Noya, who was in the same predicament. If the next 10 months were a movie, the title would've been "When Peggy met Tony." By November of 2002 they were married.

Nonetheless, their hopes of becoming doctors again were dimming.

Then they discovered the Physician-to-Nursing program, where they enrolled in May 2004 and graduated last December with bachelor's degrees.

DeCardenas passed the state nurse licensing exam in March and Noya is awaiting his results. With that hurdle cleared, they can choose from more than a dozen nursing jobs already offered to them.

"We're not sure yet which we'll take," deCardenas said.

Grossman said that although the program has been successful, its future is somewhat murky. Classes so far have been financed by the Hospital Corporation of America, supplemented in recent years by U.S. Department of Labor grants, and so far no new classes are scheduled.