Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing

After completing my master’s degree, I transitioned from clinical ICU nursing to teaching critical care at the undergraduate nursing level. During these experiences, I identified the family members of intensive care unit patients as a population who often has untoward psychological symptoms during the patient’s ICU admission. My dissertation work focused on the stress and coping of family members during and after a patient’s ICU hospitalization.

Hello, everyone, my name is Tracy Dodson and I have been a nurse for just under a decade. My focus is on emergency medicine; I am stroke and trauma certified. I will hopefully be published for the first time by the end of this year in a review of orthostatic hypotension.

My research focuses on psychological factors related to chronic pain and using integrative therapies to decrease pain and improve function. Over the past 20 years, I've studied the effect of guided imagery on pain and function in persons with chronic pain and undergoing knee arthroplasty. I am also interested in how parental chronic pain impacts the family system and developed several mid-range theories related to this phenomenon. I've practiced as a psychiatric mental health advanced practice registered nurse for over 30 years; this practice has informed by research endeavors.