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Laura Kierol Andrews is an assistant professor in the Adult Advanced Practice Nursing specialty track. She holds a joint clinical appointment at the Hospital of Central Connecticut at New Britain General as a senior Acute Care Nurse Practitioner in the department of Critical Care Medicine and manager of their Medical Rapid Response Team. Dr. Andrews previously held clinical faculty and lecturing positions at the University of Connecticut and Western Connecticut State University. She has taught in undergraduate, RN to BSN and master’s nursing programs. She was also the track coordinator of the ACNP program at UConn.
Dr. Andrews obtained her BSN and a minor in biology from Saint Joseph College, where she received the Florence Nightingale Nursing Award for academic excellence and community service. She received her MS in Acute and Critical Care Nursing and her PhD in Nursing from the University of Connecticut. Her doctoral research program consisted of studies related to critical care nurses and end of life care, the lived experience of new acute care nurse practitioners and home care of heart failure patients. Her doctoral dissertation was the development and psychometric testing of an instrument to assess critical care nurses’ level of comfort in withdrawing life-supportive therapies in adult patients for which she received the Beverly Koerner Research Award from Sigma Theta Tau: Iota Upsilon Chapter-at-Large.
In addition to her clinical and teaching activities, she is an active volunteer for the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. She has been a member of the Advanced Practice Institute for the AACN’s National Teaching Institute, an item writer for the AACN’s ACNP certification exam and an AACN research grant reviewer. She is a current member of the patient and Family Support Committee for the SCCM. Dr. Andrews received the “Excellent Nurse Practitioner Award” from AACN in 2007 and has spoken several times at their national conference. She also volunteered for six years as a nurse for the Southern Connecticut Pop Warner Football and Cheerleading Association.
Dr. Andrews’ teaches first and second specialty year acute care students in assessment and diagnostics of the acutely and critically ill, critical care pharmacology and ACNP clinicals.
Dr. Andrews’ research interests include end of life and withdrawal of life support in ICUs, rapid response teams, insomnia and heart failure and improving sleep in ICU patients.
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