East Texas

I recently moved to Houston from Tyler where I worked for 4 years. I have not worked in L&D but can tell you some about the hospitals there, as I've worked at both. I interviewed at both and chose Mother Frances because the HR department seemed to have their stuff in order more and the facility was newer, nicer, and the people appeared happier. I worked a whole year there before I could not stand it and went to 'the other side' and began working at ETMC. I worked at ETMC about 3 years and liked it much better. Mother Frances was shinier and newer and people smiled more but I sooned learned it was because they have 'scripting', and part of your yearly raise depends on it. You are required to say certain things, and they do watch to make sure you are compliant. The administration at ETMC seemed to understand the nurses more and allowed the managers a little more say in what happened on the units. ETMC also has employee events and contests, etc, which makes you feel more part of a family than TMF. The pay is about the same, because it is a smaller city and they have 2 large nursing schools in Tyler. I know of a few nurses at ETMC who became prn or 'fulltime without benefits' and the pay was much better than a fulltime nurse. I wanna say average fulltime with your experience would be 25ish and the prn pay is 30-32/hr.

Another thing to consider is that ETMC is a level 1 trauma center, and TMF is a level 2. Also, TMF as recently started a NICU program, and ETMC has no critical pedi areas.

As for Longview, they also have 2 competing hospitals, but I do not know much about either.

If you do choose Tyler, I'd suggest living in the Whitehouse or Bullard area, especially if you have schoolage kids. The ISDs there are very good!

Good luck and feel free to reply with other questions.

No flexibility with scheduling at the Tyler hospital. Everyone works the Matrix and the removed the fourth day so you might work tues, fri, sat, sun, wed, thurs or mon, fri,sat, sun, wed, thurs for the rest of your career in East Texas.