Houston TMC - ICU info?

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Hey all,

I'm a level 1 Trauma ICU/SICU nurse with about 1.5 years experience with ACLS/PALS and gonna get my CRRN done here in the next month or so and I'm looking to go back home to Houston. Any of you want to give the recent lowdown on the TMC ICU's as far as what conditions are like atm work wise etc. and competitive payrate expectations with any of the hospitals? I went to school there but decided to take a job in another part of TX to help a friend get settled back into civilian life after his last tour in Afghanistan and now want to move back to work in the great environment I experienced during school.

Any info would be helpful... thank you in advance!

(BTW my current situation is that with high acuity patients we are regularly tripled, we rarely have help staff so I am currently in a pretty tough working environment).

Thank you,

Joshua

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Of course you want to come back to H-town.... who wouldn't!!! LOVE THE BAYOU CITY They finally finished the Katy freeway... 20 lanes wide now, so the really bad traffic is now on 290 & I-45 North & South - LOL.

There is a steady market for experienced, qualified critical care nurses in the TMC. Do you have a BSN? If not, I would urge you to get your CCRN ASAP. (A CRRN will not help you get an ICU job) This credential will likely offset the degree issue, particularly if you have high level specialty skills. Have you worked with VADs? IABP? Specialty ventilators? Any transplant experience? If so, you will want to highlight those in your resume & cover letter.

If you did some school rotations in the TMC, you are probably already familiar with all the hassles related to transportation & remote parking. It is still (& will always be) composed of only not-for-profit hospitals. Salaries are very competitive, and benefits are still very good. The only major change I am familiar with is the elimination of employer-funded pension by Memorial-Hermann. CHI is in the process of acquiring St. Lukes, but that shouldn't really have an impact on nursing staff.

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Sorry it has taken me awhile to get back to this thread, and thank you very much for your reponse! My wife is giving birth soon and I'm working a ton of shifts so please forgive me!!

I am a graduate of UTHHSC there in the TMC and I spent about 500 clinical hours in MDA as well as some time at memorial childrens, TCH, methodist, and Ben Taub. I rode my bike to school and to rotations in fact ;) This also means I have my bachelors with > 3.0 GPA and I plan to take the CCRN test here pretty soon. I would have taken it sooner but I've worked 60+ hours a week almost every week this year for debt/baby reasons!

I currently work in a trauma ICU at a level 1 trauma center in another part of TX and I have a lot of great experience but we do not use VADs and very, very rarely use IABP's here. Usually they drop IABP's here for a single test and then pull them, and that's usually only during the day. We do use speciality ventilators and I have spent weeks at at time with patients on an oscillator. We have also used another specialty vent that I can't think of the name of at this particular moment. We do a lot of mass transfusions and all the other stuff that goes along with super critical trauma patients and we take overflow medical as well as gen surg critical care patients. Our Trauma unit also takes all trauma related neuro patients so I have a lot of experience with ventrics and the like as well. In every case possible they use vigileo's and CVP in so much as that's an option instead of an IABP btw. As I understand it they do a lot more IABP stuff in our CVICU of course.

Thank you for the suggestions about what to highlight in my resume/cover letter! I have found out over the last month that I have a lot of friends working in ICU's still and they are willing to help me get interviews so hopefully I get some offers!

Thanks a lot and any further advice is appreciated.

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