Donna Rolin PhD, APRN, PMHCNS-BC, PMHNP-BC

Dr. Donna Rolin is a Clinical Associate Professor and the Director of the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner program at The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing. She received her Ph.D. in Nursing Research from New York University, her MSN in Psychiatric Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BSN from Wichita State University. Her research focuses on community psychiatry and substance use disorders. She is active in the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, where she serves on the national Board of Directors in the role of Treasurer, and locally in the Psychiatric Advanced Practice Nurses of Austin organization.

Her clinical background, as a Psychiatric Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, encompasses cognitive-behavioral, group, and family psychotherapies as well as psychiatric evaluation and pharmacotherapy for persons with mental illness and cognitive disorders in inpatient, outpatient, community, and forensic settings. Currently, she practices in a community-based group working with underserved patients with serious mental illnesses, cognitive disorders, and intellectual disabilities in outpatient, long-term care, and inpatient psychiatric facilities.

Her clinical and educational work regarding Substance Use Disorders began in 1998 when she was the Charge Nurse of the Dual Diagnosis Forensic Intensive Residential Program at North Philadelphia Health System until 2000, when she left for the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school, earning MSN in Psychiatric Nursing in 2002. As a Research Interventionist and faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, she provided a medication adherence in-home intervention based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to persons with serious mental illness and HIV. From 2008-2009, during her Ph.D. education at New York University, she completed the Substance Abuse Research Education and Training (SARET) Fellowship supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse R25 Grant. This included a Residency at the New York University School of Medicine Behavioral Science and Substance Abuse Research Group and the Bellevue Hospital Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA) awarded her a scholarship in 2010. Her 2012 dissertation at New York University was a qualitative, phenomenological exploration of “The Lived Experience of Spirituality in Alcoholism Recovery.”