Bromyard Community Hospital in Herefordshire is drafting in help from the Philippines and Europe to bridge the 80-post gap.
It comes after staff agreed to work extra hours to save the in-patient ward from closure.
But The Wye Valley NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said this was a temporary measure.
Paul Hooton, the hospital's deputy director of nursing, said: "We are very pleased with our staff and how they have stepped up and said they could do extra to help us to keep in-patients open.
"But we have to review it on an ongoing basis to make sure that we can ultimately deliver safe inpatient care."
"We have a major recruitment campaign going on locally to try and attract nurses living within our local community back into nursing."
Its recruitment advert said it was looking for newly-qualified nurses and people who had left the profession.
Mr Hooton added: "To put it into context, we are not the only trust in the country that is desperate to recruit nurses - this is a national problem."
Hospital bosses say they will continue to hire foreign workers to try and solve a "desperate" shortage of nurses.