Per Diem nursing in Dallas/FW area? Or...Austin? Houston? :)

[NICU_Nurse, BSN, RN]

Hi,

I posted recently about travel agencies and contracts in Dallas, etc., but tonight I was specifically wondering about Per Diem work available in these areas? I do NICU, and was just wondering, for those of you working at any number of hospitals (there are so many!) if there is much of a market for this type of agency work these days? I'm not seeing a lot of NICU travel jobs available, and I've been to the individual facility web sites and seen some ads for PRN/Pool nurses, but I was curious about third-party agencies?

Are you working with many agency nurses these days? This is definitely a possibility for me, but it would require me to actually physically (permanantly) move to Texas, and I don't know how to estimate what the market might be for work. Does your unit use agency nurses only occasionally? Do they only use in-house pool? Any help would be awesome.

The problem I'm having is I have a 'brief' window of time that I need to remain a resident in my home state, approximately 6 months or so, before I could permanently move to Texas. Travel contracts that provide housing would be ideal, but like I said, there don't seem to be too many of those available right now. My second option is local agency nursing, but I would need enough work weekly to bridge me until I could get a Texas driver's license and register my car and all of that. I would need at least 3 shifts/week for a few months, even if they were split amongst various hospitals.

Thank you!