Dallas-Fort Worth Nesties
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Any nurses out there?
Hey nesties! I graduate from my BSN program in December and am looking for an internship program in the DFW area (Preferably ER, but I'll take ANYTHING haha)... any advice on where to look? tips on how to get in? I could really use some help! Thanks!
Re: Any nurses out there?
I am not a nurse but am pre-med. I'd say if you want to be exposed to a lot of interesting cases, I'd go for Parkland. I volunteer at the Parkland ER - yes it is a county hospital, but it is the best place in Dallas to go if you have an emergency. UT Southwestern is another major hospital in the hospital district. I work there and love working for UT Southwestern. That being said, I am a bit biased - I would give anything to go to med school there. I have a friend who is a nurse at University Hospital St. Paul (a UT Southwestern system hospital) who really hates her department. She has also said that she doesn't like a lot of the nurses at UT Southwestern in general - too catty.
I personally think that Parkland would be a great place to start so you can gain a ton of exposure.
If you have any more questions about hospitals in the area, please let me know. I've spent a semester at each one in the immediate Dallas area volunteering.
Good luck!
I'm a nurse!
Actually, I work at UT Southwestern, but at Zale Lipshy. (UT SW has 2 hospitals and clinics and stuff, the hospitals are St. Paul, who has an ER, and Zale Lipshy, who does not.)
I work ICU and I know we NEEEEED ICU nurses (probably elsewhere, but given I'm ICU, I'll be biased towards them.
St. Paul has a cardiac ICU, a med/surg ICU, and a general medicine ICU. Zale has a neuro/surgical ICU, which is where I work.
To tell you the truth, I really really really love my unit. And the times I've floated to the other ICUs, I haven't had a bad experience. I just am not a fan of the types of patients the general medicine ICU gets.
Parkland has really good programs. When I graduated 2 years ago the recruiter who came to my school from there was not so nice to us, so I didn't pursue it. But other girls who I've talked to who've been through it said it was good. They work hard at Parkland.
Baylor Dallas is a Level 1 trauma center and Methodist Dallas is a level 2 trauma center. They'd both have great ERs. (Parkland is level 1 as well)
I know first hand UT Southwestern pays better than Methodist, but I don't know about the other hospitals. I know Methodist and UTSW both have really great benefits packages and clinical ladders and such. Plus if you have any previous time working for the state, in any capacity, working for UTSW is working for the state as well and it will accumulate and you'll get vested faster.
Tips: LOOK NOW. The graduate class after mine, I heard that many of the girls had a hard time finding a job, but the economy was really bad at that time. Keep your grades up as best as you can. Keep your mind open. I thought I would hate a neuro ICU (surgical is mixed, but ugh, right?) and I thought I wanted trauma (since I'm a paramedic as well), but I absolutely freaking love my unit.
Oh, and pay attention to who you will work with. These are the people who will help you along and teach you and hold your hand when you're having a bad night/day. You want to like and trust these nurses and know you have someone to lean on when you need it. My mom is a nurse and had a bad experience in a unit purely because those nurses and her did not get along. Its better to move on to another job. Thats just way too much stress.
Furbabies Ribby, JJ, Bella, Hunter
*Waves!* Hey!!! Me too!
**wave back** I'm a night-shifter! No one is ever up when I am! The other boards I lurk on is like mandatory lurking since all I can ever do is drive-by MAYBE once a night. It takes too long to catch up.
Furbabies Ribby, JJ, Bella, Hunter
Make sure you email/call/contact in some fashion the recruiters for the hospitals. I graduated from a fast track program and I couldn't find a lot of internships listed for me (I wanted ICU first, ER second) that started in the Fall, but it turns out the hospitals were slow to get them posted. Most of the major hospitals (Baylor, THRs, Parkland, UTSW) all had internships that started in the fall that I could have joined. They also usually have internships that start in the spring for December grads.
For ICUs you probably will not find anyone who will hire you without going through an internship, but the internship, at least at my hospital and I assume at other hospitals, is basically being hired and being taught the crap they want you to know before you start on your own on the unit. An internship is a guaranteed job at the hospital. Its not like people who majored in business and got an internship that pays little to nothing then hoped to be offered a job later.
UT Southwestern is located in downtown Dallas. My hospital, Zale Lipshy (one of the hospitals under the UTSW umbrella) is IMMEDIATELY next to Parkland and Childrens. St. Paul is about a block down the road. Like at night, one of our dinner options is to walk to Parkland and Childrens (our basements are attached) since Zale's personal cafeteria closes about 7pm or so. (we all just bring our food at night anyways). Its not as well known because the hospitals it encompasses used to be free standing (Zale used to be a private hospital, St. Paul also a private Catholic hospital) but the UT Southwestern umbrella (a very good medical school) took us all in about 5 years ago or something like that and we're state run now. I like it, but I wasn't here when it was private.
Most of the hospitals I listed in my previous post do internships for their ICUs and teach everything you need to know. I don't know how competitive it will be, but I know when I was being haired, they basically just looked to see if I had any Cs in any classes and where. I did not, but one of my friends hired after me did and it was in Management class and they did not care about that. So it seems that Cs may not be a death sentence if you have any.
I forgot about Ft. Worth hospitals. There are good hospitals over there, but I'm not familiar with them. I have a friend who works in the ER at Cook's Children's, but I never mentioned anything about hospitals for children because you didn't mention a desire for pediatrics. If that's so, there are 3 main hospitals in the area you might look at (Children's Hospital, Dallas, next to Parkland, Medical City Dallas, and Cook's Children's in Ft. Worth).
I forgot 2 other big hospitals, that are almost literally a couple exits away from each other in Dallas off of I-75, which is Presby Dallas (a THR hospital) and Medical City Dallas. I believe they're both magnet hospitals. (my system is in the process of gaining magnet status, if that matters to you)
Furbabies Ribby, JJ, Bella, Hunter
I'm not a nurse but work at one of the Baylor Hospitals. Both Baylor and Texas Health Resources have a bunch of community hospitals in their systems. I have a friend that just started her nursing internship at Baylor Garland. So keep in mind that there are smaller hospitals too.
Children's also has a campus in Plano and there are a few other hospitals in the northern suburbs, like Mckinney Medical Center, Richardson Methodist, Cenntenial in Frisco.