NKCH Employee of the Month

By Jenny Johnston

Shows like Grey's Anatomy, ER and the new show Trauma are all popular medical soap operas. They all take place in hospital emergency rooms where extreme cases are always flowing in. Patients are missing body parts, have a tree limb sticking out both sides of their chest or just got in a ferry boat accident and had a concrete pillar fall on their face. As intense and exciting as this may sound, TV tends to exaggerate.

North Kansas City Hospital's new Emergency Room manager, Stephanie Dropplemann deals with the stress of operating an ER in a more realistic way than what television would depict. Stephanie started working at NKCH in 2002. She became the Emergency Room supervisor in 2007 and was recently promoted to ER manager in July.

Stephanie grew up in northeastern Missouri in a small town called Memphis. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and then went to Independence Regional for six years. Stephanie never thought she would wind up in the health care field. "It was the last thing on my agenda," says Stephanie. "In my 1st year of college my grandma had open heart surgery and that's when I really became interested in the whole surgery process and interested in health care."

Stephanie has a lot on her plate being the manager. "I'm usually pretty busy back here," says Stephanie. "Everyday is always exciting, changing and chaotic. It's my job to keep the flow of the ER going. I work with the staff and act as a liaison between the nursing staff and physicians."

Stephanie explains some of the differences between reality and what's shown on cable. "On TV there is never a wait," says Stephanie. "They don't go in depth about cardiac and the whole medical side of issues." NKCH is the busiest adult ER in the city. The ER brings in over 65,000 patients a year and 1,000 of those are actual medical traumas.

Stephanie is married and has two daughters, Madison, 9 and Alyson, 6. She loves spending time with her girls and going out and enjoying activities together with her family such as skiing and traveling to the beach. Her family are Wizards' fans and big NASCAR fans. She and her family love going out to the races at Kansas Speedway and they closely follow Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards and Dale Earnhardt. Jr.