St. David's Health care, Austin, Texas

Hi,

Wanted to encourage you, if you're considering relocation to Austin, TX anyway, to look at the Seton Hospital Network. I'm a newly hired nurse with them and I love it. Am working daytime 12s on a med-surg/telemetry unit. Am getting excellent support from staff nurses and management/clinical educators, plus an 18-week orientation!

Moved to the Texas Nurses forum for more replies.

I can't speak to the med-surg units specifically, but I have worked for both hospitals. Hands down Seton treats their nurses better. They also pay a bit more than St. Davids too. If I were to go back to Austin, I'd choose Seton. As another poster mentioned, you should really consider Seton as an option.

2 major systems own/operate most of the hospitals in the Austin and surrounding area. Seton is no-profit, St. David's is for-profit. If you have never worked in hospitals like these, you will generally find that a for-profit hospital is worse than a no-profit hospital. For-profit facilities have investors that expect to receive monetary dividends - think stock market. Thus for-profit is more apt to be very controlling of things, particularly in making nurses work harder with less of everything.

SShannon-

I wanted to know more about Seton Hospitals... I was considering working for them and relocating to Austin, I think I would do this soon and would love any honest input.

Thanks.. I'm from cali and currently livin in Boston, but cost of living, the people etc,, too much for me

I'm happy to share with you what I know of Seton. I've been employed with them since January this year, but also volunteered on one of their units before starting nursing school. My husband also was cared for following spinal fusion surgery at a Seton hospital. All were positive experiences and I didn't consider applying anywhere else (I did do clinicals at two St. David's facilities, so I had some basis for comparison).

Please let me know what some of your specific questions are and I'll be glad to answer. You probably can get a lot of info from their nursing recruiters. Contact them at 512-324-1776.

My personal impression is that Seton is very nurse friendly. It has a nursing governance council that is very active in policy and decision making, and each hospital unit has its own council. Seton also utilizes TCAB at several of its hospitals, and it just has made its way to my unit at Brackenridge Hospital.

All Seton's new RNs (just passed or are about to pass NCLEX) are required to go through the 18- to 22-week Versant program (length determined by which specialty area you're in). It's a structured teaching/orientation program that I'm in the midst of. Some of it is kind of basic review from nursing school, but much of it is useful to us all, particularly if you weren't in the Austin area doing your clinicals at a Seton facility. You can get your hands on their equipment and have people teach you in small groups or one-on-one how to use it (lift equipment, pumps, etc.).

Starting salary is $21.46 and once you pass NCLEX you're eligible for differentials (don't ask me what they are because I never pay attention to them ... isn't that pathetic?).

On my med-surg unit, nurses typically carry 4-5 patients on dayshift (can't speak to nights because I don't work that shift). Once out of orientation, you can work 12s or 8s. They like you to work every other weekend.

That's all I can think of right now.

Let me know if you have other questions. Feel free to private message me and I can pass along specific contact info for a couple of the recruiters if you'd like. But the phone number above will get you connected with them.

Best!