SWMC Welcomes Underwood as OB-GYN Nurse Practitioner

•   provided by Southwest Medical Center

Southwest Medical Center is proud to announce the addition of Tori Underwood, APRN-C, as a nurse practitioner at the Women’s Specialty Center of Liberal. She joins the hospital’s OB-GYN care center working alongside Lamberto O. Flores, M.D.

Underwood has been a part of the Liberal community for many years, and worked most recently as the Director of Utilization Management at Southwest Medical Center. She is a graduate of Liberal High School and Seward County Community College, where she earned a certificate in Surgical Technology as well as her Associate Degree in Nursing. Underwood worked for Southwest Medical Center as a CNA, LPN, and RN before going on to acquire her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the Kansas University School of Nursing.

She returned to Liberal in 2011 and worked as SWMC’s employee health nurse and later as Utilization Management Director while working towards earning her Masters of Science in Nursing from the Maryville University of Saint Louis, which she completed in 2017.

Underwood says moving towards her career as a nurse practitioner seemed like a natural next step, and that she found her interest in serving OB-GYN patients during her clinical rotations.

“I wanted to be able to serve the community and take care of people in a new way,” Underwood said. “I want my patients to feel that we’re a team working together to help them understand their health. I hope to individualize care for each patient in order to meet their unique needs.”

In focusing on serving her patients, Underwood believes her background in Utilization Management has helped her see the “bigger picture” for patients and how to help them navigate their health needs.

“I can definitely see a patient’s whole experience from beginning to end,” she said. “I’ve seen how a person’s home, financial, insurance, and community resource situations play a role in a patient’s care. For me, this gives me the ability to more easily move my patients through the healthcare system in a way that helps them improve their health with the resources they do have.”

Underwood says completing her education and certification as a nurse practitioner was difficult, especially while raising her young daughter and working full-time, but that she’s now eager to serve the community who provided her support.

“Once I finished my master’s degree I was just so grateful for all my coworkers and the team of family and friends that supported me through everything,” Underwood said. “The hospital has been good to me and I feel like I’ve been supported so well through my continued education so I wanted to give back. There’s a great need here in the community and I want to help do my part in supporting patients here in my hometown.”

Tori Underwood, APRN-C, is now seeing patients at the Women’s Specialty Center of Liberal, alongside Dr. Lamberto O. Flores. The practice is located at 305 W. 15^th Street, Suite 104 inside the Medical Office Building at Southwest Medical Center. She is accepting new patients and most major insurances, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Medicare, and Kansas and Oklahoma Medicaid. For questions about services performed by Tori Underwood, APRN-C, please call (620) 624-9637 or visit www.swmccare.com.