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Before I was a nurse 3 years ago, I worked for Harris Southwest in a PCU (same as IMC essentially) unit, and I generally liked the Harris system.. although I was a nurse tech at the time and did not know the things to look for in an employer that I would pay attention to now. I do know that the Harris hospitals are generally considered to be the nicer ones in Fort Worth as far as aesthetics. I had some clinicals at Baylor downtown on a med/surg unit that I didn't really care for, however BUMC in Dallas has a great rep. Parkland is of course a very well known teaching and research hospital, and if you're into caring for the type of population with a county hospital like JPS, nurses there are generally happy with their jobs as well. I don't think there was any one particular hospital that I ever heard "to stay away from" in Fort Worth. It seems to really all be individual unit-dependent, not necessarily hospital-dependent. I think your best bet would be to visit the units that are hiring, and find what you think would be a good fit for you. Good luck!! I'm an RN at Brackenridge (the Trauma Center in Austin) now, and I miss Fort Worth so much. I hope you find what you're looking for :)

Yeah, never worked in a place that an LVN could not draw blood.. They do pretty much the same things as I do, aside from some narcotic med restrictions and hanging blood.

I would go ahead and finish the bio degree since you're almost done, just to have it under your belt and give you more options in the future.. and then either get an associates and a community college for your RN, or like the others said, the better option is probably to do an accelerated BSN, as that's the trend for what hospitals are looking for. But either way, you'd be an RN. And it's a great asset in today's economy. I don't fear for my job at all right now as most people do.

Us too right now.. and I work in a major level 1 trauma center. We're getting cancelled and sent home all the time.

I had my baby when I was in nursing school in my final semester, so I never dealt with having young children to manage. But I did survive a pregnancy and a newborn during a very difficult semester, and all I can say is that you will live through it. Your management of it will totally depend on outside help from family, friends, and childcare resources like you were talking about. If you hear good things about the daycare center, I'd at least get on the waiting list becuase you can always take your kids out if you don't like it. It helps to have a hubby with a flexible schedule too, because outside of weird class and clinical times, you're going to be doing a lot of studying and will need someone to watch the kiddos. So, long story short.. you totally can do it! It's done by moms, and even single moms, all the time. Just figure out what will work for you, and there are always resources to help you out.

No, LTC is usually post-hospitalization patients or patients coming out of rehab who are not yet ready to be fully discharged to home and need continuing care. There are different types of long term care, some acute and some not. I don't know a whole lot about it, but from discharging patients to LTC facilities, that is the types of patients they seem to take.

Basically how Versant works is that you apply for any GN opening you choose to apply for, and you will simultaneously be applying for Versant. If you get a job after interviewing on different floors and you take a position, you're automatically accepted for Versant too. So you basically just have to be hired. If you have less than 1 yr nursing experience, everyone goes through that same process when applying at Seton. So as long as there is still room to hire within Seton, there will be Versant spots open. They kind of determine the number of Versant openings by how many new jobs are approved for each individual floor.

And remember - with nursing, you can try a schedule and if it doesn't work.. you can always leave for another hospital or change your area of nursing entirely. Nothing is permanent. If nights turn out to not be a great fit for you, a school nurse job might just pop up at your daughter's school and you might have her same schedule, you know? There are so many options and it will just take some tweaking to get yours right.

Well like I said, it totally depends on your situation. That may well be what works best for you, and that may be totally unworkable for someone else. I personally was so wiped out from night shift, I felt like I spent all my days recovering rather than enjoying time with my child. However, my child does not have kindergarten to go to, which would be some good time to sleeo.. she only has a mothers day out 3 mornings a week to help us out. As far as shifts go, no I did mean four 8hr shifts, not 5. You MIGHT be able to find a place that does that, I've just never seen it.In the hospital world, 32 hours is considered full time for most networks. This is becuase if you worked five 8 hr shifts, that would automatically always put you at 40hrs, and any thing over that is considered overtime. And since you'd actually have to arrive at your shift 15 min early and leave 15 min later than your shift's start and end time (for nursing report, etc), that would always put you into overtime.. and I will tell you it is rare for a nurse's job to be over at the end of their shift. I am usually still there charting for at least 15 to 30 minutes on a fairly good day. Also, if you worked 5 8hr shifts, that would leave very little flexibility in your scheduling, as most units require you to rotate and work some weekends here and there unless you have alot of staff on weekend plan. Every nurse I work with has a unique childcare situation.. and we all have our kids doing something different to make our lives work. You just have to figure out what works for you. Nights may be it. Nursing is defintiely not ideal for being a single mother, although there are some great positives to it as well if you can get it worked out right. Best of luck to you!

Have you thought of office nursing? I worked for an OBGYN group for a while and worked M-F hours.. but the way it was set up, we always ended up getting one day off a week when our doctor was post-call, so I worked MTWF 7:30 to 5pm. No weekends, no holidays.

It totally depends on your situation. If you are a single mom with a child who is in school, my recommendation is to get into office nursing because your hours with better correlate with your child's school hours, and you will not be working weekends/holidays. School nursing would be even better because you'd also have the summers off with your child. If you have a younger child, hospital nursing may be better because you can (depending on where you work) choose to work four 8hr or three 12hr shifts. That can work out great if you can find a hospital that has good on-site childcare because they'll even stay open til 7pm until your shift is over. I am kind of in that situation right now. I am working three 12s and I have a two yr old that stays with her dad some days and my mom some days. I like having more days off with her than I would if I worked in an office 4 or 5 days a week. As she gets older though, I will most likely go into office or school nursing so I can have evenings at home with her and not have to battle the holiday time. Hope that helps.

AvenueQT - I got hired with OBGyn Group of Austin (previously DesRosier & Wernecke Assoc.), and they are one of the only places I know of that is open to hiring new grads. I think I mainly got the position because I had been a longtime patient of theirs and knew their nursing manager, and they knew I had a special interest in women's health. Otherwise, I think it would have been very difficult to find an office job as a new grad. HOWEVER, I will say, office nursing is VERY different from hospital, and although it is more laid back, there is very little training (one week for me as opposed to 4 months at the hospital) and I felt extremely unprepared to be managing a doctor's patients the way office nurses do because they expected me to know a lot more than I did. I also felt like I was not getting very good learning experience and time management skills that I am getting at Brack now. I think later on, I'd love to go back to an office, and when I do, I'll kick ass at it because I'm so much more well rounded as a nurse after this year of doing hospital nursing experience. Just a tip for ya :)

Yep... I got that same email last year, and that's about when I gave up on them. It's ridiculous. It's like, thanks for acknowledging that I applied within the last 6 months. I didn't even get that email until after I'd already gotten a job somewhere else.

I will just say... even though my best friend's mother is the workforce development manager for St. Davids.. I STILL couldn't get an interview with them. I applied and was persistent in staying in touch wtih the recruiter.. kept calling... waited forever. It was a nightmare. Seton calls back way faster and got me an interview, even though there weren;t openings in the area I wanted. I took a job with Seton and even though that unit is not where I'll probably stay for years, it got my foot in the door with the hospital system so I can transfer later. Good luck with St. Davids. They are NOT good about working with applicants. Also, all the Austin hospitals are on a hiring freeze to some extent.. some more than others.

I did clinicals on the psych units at both JPS Trinity Springs and Huguley. I liked both units.