Tucson Hospitals - VA, TMC, UMC, St Mary's

[Tanker]

Hello,

We are making the move to Tucson come May when I graduate. I need to decide on which hospital to work. I think I have it down to 4. I have read through the posts on some of the hospitals. The 4 I am interested in are the VA, UMC, TMC and St Mary's. They all seem to have pros and cons. Can anyone shed any light on these? Especially the VA. I know it would be easy to just "try" one for a while and switch but I would rather make a very informed decision and stay at one place if at all possible.

St Mary's seems to be employee friendly but not traveler (per posts). Good relo plan too. Have reviewed their site and talked to recruiter. Is the training/orientation as good as it sounds?

VA has wonderful benefits, especially vacation and sick time and seem to start NGs at the highest rate in the area. Plus they want you to start on med/surg floor first.

TMC seems very progressive. Lots of areas to work. Good start rate and signon/relo money.

UMC has some good opportunites to start and would see a lot there. Nice facility.

Any input on career growth, opportunities, how staff treats new grads and the overall satisfaction would be much appreciated. No place is perfect. We will be living near Oro Valley. NMC-OV is not taking any NGs right now. That would have been REALLY convenient.

Thanks

[suzanne4, RN]

Hello,

We are making the move to Tucson come May when I graduate. I need to decide on which hospital to work. I think I have it down to 4. I have read through the posts on some of the hospitals. The 4 I am interested in are the VA, UMC, TMC and St Mary's. They all seem to have pros and cons. Can anyone shed any light on these? Especially the VA. I know it would be easy to just "try" one for a while and switch but I would rather make a very informed decision and stay at one place if at all possible.

St Mary's seems to be employee friendly but not traveler (per posts). Good relo plan too. Have reviewed their site and talked to recruiter. Is the training/orientation as good as it sounds?

VA has wonderful benefits, especially vacation and sick time and seem to start NGs at the highest rate in the area. Plus they want you to start on med/surg floor first.

TMC seems very progressive. Lots of areas to work. Good start rate and signon/relo money.

UMC has some good opportunites to start and would see a lot there. Nice facility.

Any input on career growth, opportunities, how staff treats new grads and the overall satisfaction would be much appreciated. No place is perfect. We will be living near Oro Valley. NMC-OV is not taking any NGs right now. That would have been REALLY convenient.

Thanks

I thoroughly enjoyed my travel assignment at TMC, but it also depends on what type of unit that you are on. I have some friends that were on other units that just hated it.

I also did agency work at UMC and liked that quite a bit.

Sorry no help with the other two.

[neuronursein06]

I was in the ER at TMC last spring- food poisoning from Firecracker- and thought the tx was fine....not fabulous, but not horrible either. Other than that, I don't know much about the hospitals- but friends of my folks who are retired MD's who worked at University Medical said it was a very good place- same with the VA.

Good luck!