Hello everyone, my name is Andrea Rountree. I am happily married for the last 14 years and have 3 beautiful daughters and a border collie named Cowley. We live on a farm south of Wichita, Ks. We don’t farm anything but hay which is necessary for our 5 horses, 2 of them are miniature. My primary area of clinical experience is public health. I started my nursing career at a small rural hospital in 2011. I stayed there for 9 years and as many of you may know, when you are in a rural setting you have to learn all areas. I have experience in ER, OR, PACU, OB, Med/Surg, Pain Management and Skilled nursing care. My heart is ER however, in 2017 I left our struggling hospital for a full-time job in public health at the local health department. I couldn’t turn down an 8-5 job with weekends off with my 3 babies still at home. I have learned a lot here, especially since Covid-19. I am currently working on completing my BSN and hope to finish by May 2021. My plan was to finish sooner however meningitis and an encephalocele changed those plans a little and I had to slow down some. What I love about the profession is all the love and care I received by the amazing CCU nurses, OR nurses and PACU nurses during my recovery. This experience has taught me a lot and just further solidifies this is where I’m supposed to be.

Evidence based practice is incorporated into everything we do from cleaning a site prior to injection to prevent infection to checking temps on vaccinations to make sure that they are viable are and will protect our patients. It is in the way we draw and prepare blood for the various labs we need to make sure our patients are healthy. It governs the interventions we have for certain disease processes so that our patients can receive the best care possible.

I am looking forward to this class and learning as much as I can to help me be a better nurse. Good luck everyone and hope y’all have a great 8 weeks!