CentralTXRN

I don't know when you lived in Austin, or where, but seeing as how you did work at Brackenridge you know it is in downtown Austin. I work trauma there and get to deal with all the shootings, stabbings, drive-bys, assaults, and rapes that happen on a daily basis. Maybe one a day is not as impressive as the numbers in Houston unless you are that one person that it happens to. I don't consider myself an alarmist, but it is hard to argue with the city's official statistics. Not to mention, my husband has been a police officer here for 12 years and is a supervisor in the exact area in question. If anyone would know about crime in a city I would think it would be the officers who deal with it EVERY DAY. So, Dave, if you have statistics that say the area where the parking lot is located is EXTREMELY safe I would love to see them. Until then I'm going to watch my back and hope that nothing happens to my friends or myself.

I really appreciate everyone's suggestions. Hopefully there will be a lot of people coming and going at the same time. I am, however, going to give the stats I pulled to one of the assistant administrators i know. Thanks again for all the advice! Stephanie

Where to begin..... I work at a large trauma hospital in a city of about 1 million people. I worked nights until 1 month ago and always parked in the hospital garage adjacent to the hospital. They take money out of my check every month to pay for the parking garage and my badge gets me in and out. The only way your badge will work to get you out is if you badged in. This makes it so that staff won't let other people out of the garage without paying. Skip to day shift...The parking garage installed a second set of gates on the 6th level so that only employees can park on level 6 and above. These gates were installed about two months before I went to day shiftl. For the past month I have been parking in the employee section during my day shift with no problems...UNTIL TODAY!!! As I tried to leave my badge would not let me out of the employee level. I got on my cell phone and called the parking office to let me out. After an HOUR of sitting in the garage I got out of my car and walked down to the parking office. There I was informed that I could no longer park in the garage unless I had been an employee for 15 years or I worked in the housekeeping department. COULD THEY NOT HAVE TOLD ME THIS BEFORE I BADGED INTO THE GARAGE AND WORKED 9 HOURS. Needless to say I was informed that I must now start parking at an offsite parking lot for employees and take a shuttle to the hospital. I probably wouldn't have a problem with this, but the parking lot is in one of the worst areas in the city. There is no security for the employees walking to and from their cars and no one there with the cars during the day. My hubby is a police officer who works that area and is EXTREMELY upset about this. I pulled the crime stats from that area and there have been numerous armed robberies, sexual assaults, burglary of vehicles and even two HOMICIDES. All within ONE block of our parking lot. I get to work at 5:00 am and there is very little light in the parking area. What do you think? My clinical manager says that no one has had any trouble....YET.

I work in Austin at Brackenridge. I just finished reading an article that Texas nurses are underpaid by 10% and that Austin nurses are 10% less than that. With the two nursing schools here they can hire a new grad for much less than they will pay an experienced RN. The GN pay isn't great either....$18.22....and the cost of living here is outrageous.