Psych RN thinking of relocating to Austin

U.S.A. Texas

Published

Hi,

This March, I will have 1 year under my belt as a psych RN. I am thinking of relocating to Austin from the Chicago land area. Does anyone know how the job market is in Austin for psych RNs?

Thank you.

Specializes in Adult Acute Psych Inpatient.

I don't know about Austin, but San Antonio (45 mins away from Austin) it is good. I just got hired at one of the two freestanding facilities as a new grad. The State Hospital is in San Antonio, and it is also looking for nurses. There actually is a need here.

Thank you!

Psych in Austin is pretty surprising (and dismal)....at least it was for me. I'm a psychiatric social worker (LCSW), returning to school for nursing, working now doing mostly suicide assessments in an ER and crisis center.

Mental health services in Texas are appalling, overall - at least I was appalled, coming from Minnesota a year ago. Very few psych beds relative to the size of the city, very limited community services such as ACT teams, case management etc to support folks outside the hospital. What is usually accepted as best practice elsewhere....integrated dual-diagnosis programs, for instance....practically nonexistent here. For specialty populations (e.g. geropsych) - next to nothing. There just isn't any funding or political support; Texas per-capita mental health spending is somewhere in the neighborhood of 45-50th in the US. You hospitalize people for 2-5 days and boot them back out to the streets with maybe the possibility of seeing a case manager every 1-3 months, if you're lucky. For goodness' sake, Medicaid here only covers three prescriptions a month!

The two private psych hospitals in Austin are Austin Lakes (for-profit) and Seton Shoal Creek (Catholic nonprofit) - you can probably check on their web sites for specific job openings. There is a state hospital here too (Austin State Hospital). The pay will probably be significantly lower than what you get now; cost of living is less than Chicago, especially housing, but you still might actually come out behind financially.

All that said...Austin is truly a great place to live. You will find people to be incredibly friendly, it's a great place to enjoy the outdoors, and if you like hot weather you will be soooooo happy to say goodbye to the slush and car-scraping and shoveling. It's a question of figuring out where you're willing to compromise, I guess.

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