Best Healthcare Professional
Stephanie Tedder Keene Johnston County native followed her father’s advice By Randy Capps
If you ask Stephanie Tedder Keene why she decided to become a nurse, her answer might surprise you. “Because my daddy told me to,” she said. “He was an instructor at Wilson Community College, and had a lot of nursing friends. So he thought that was the area my sister and I needed to be in, and he highly encouraged that. I actually started nursing school before I graduated from high school. I started that winter semester, like in January. He signed me up, and back in those days it wasn’t an application. It was a matter of who would go.” She went, and because of her compassion and dedication to her patients, she has earned the 2020 Johnston Now Honors award for Best Healthcare Professional. “I’m greatly honored and humbled by this award,” she said. I’m only as good as God has made me to be. He gives me that 16 | JOHNSTON NOW
strength to do what I do every day and I’m very thankful.”
comfortable with things and we know a little bit more than we did to start with.
For the last 17 years, Keene has worked at Johnston Health.
“At the wound center, we were deemed essential. Because, by seeing people we kept them out of the emergency room. We stayed about the same, as far as the number of patients are concerned.”
“It’s a great hospital to work for,” she said. “The benefits are great. I worked with Ruth Marler (chief operating officer and chief nursing officer), used to be Ruth Bailey, at Wilson hospital when I first started nursing back in the ’80s. She’s a great chief officer. It’s an honor to work there, really. I’m just blessed.” Working in the Therapeutic Wound Center, Keene has faced the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic firsthand. “It’s greatly impacted all of us,” she said. “There’s a lot of fear from day to day. More so in the beginning than now because now we’re just a little more
While wearing a mask all day has been an adjustment for Keene, the rest of the protocols are old hat. “In wound care, you have to wash your hands,” she said. “You have to take all of those precautions anyway. “We have a great team. And we work together as a team. We love those patients. We see them every week. Some of them we see two or three times a week, some we see every day. You get to know their families, and you get to know about their life.”
