Employee of the Month has historic ties to Boone Hospital
Shari Bullard is Boone Hospital Center’s Employee of the Month for March 2014. Click here to nominate someone for Employee of the Month.
When Shari Bullard first came to Boone Hospital in 1981, she was still deciding if she wanted to be a nurse or a teacher. At the time, Shari was a nurse’s aide on what was then called the Cardiac Unit, working on weekends while attending at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. She had received her nurse’s aide training from a Boone Hospital class taught over the summer.
Shari was no stranger to Boone Hospital then; her mother had served here as a nurse, and her brother worked here as a respiratory therapist from 1977 through 1980, then later as a perfusionist.
“I had an early start at Boone,” Shari says. “I walked the halls of the hospital while my Mom was employed here and pregnant with me.”
After receiving her nursing degree at Lincoln University, Shari became a nurse on the Cardiac unit. In 1989, she took a new position as a medical auditor, a role she has kept ever since.
As a medical auditor, Shari ensures that patients are billed correctly for the care they receive at the hospital. It’s a job that usually requires her to explain a lot, a part of the job that she enjoys, since it allowed her to be both a nurse and a teacher.
“I always liked working with numbers and figures,” she says. “I’ve been able to use what I liked about teaching in this job, too. I get to help people in our departments understand things like charges and reimbursement.”
Shari lives on a farm in Hartsburg with her Boone baby husband, Jim, a retired firefighter where they raise some cattle. “I married the boy next door,” she says.
Jim also has family ties to Boone Hospital Center; his great-great-grandfather was a Boone County physician, Dr. F.G. Sitton, who supported the founding of Boone County Hospital. Unfortunately, he passed away before the hospital opened, but the family still has the invitation letter dated November 1921
Together they have two sons, both Boone babies: Jacob, who resides on the Bullard family century farm, and Ross, currently serving in the Army in Afghanistan.
In her spare time, Shari enjoys nature, her farm critters and being outdoors: “I’d much rather be working in the flower beds or walking in the woods. I just really enjoy the outside.”
When asked what Shari likes best about working at Boone Hospital Center, she doesn’t hesitate to reply:
“The people that work here have such dedication to patient care and to making sure that patients are taken care of in the best way.”
As our employee of the month, Shari demonstrates her dedication every day. Congratulations!