Yoonjae Lee, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC is a first-year PhD student at Penn Nursing with a passion for advancing nursing science in pain management. With over nine years of direct clinical experience in rehabilitation medicine, she gained valuable insights into the significance of optimal postsurgical pain control and its profound impact on prolonged opioid use and health outcomes. Inspired by her clinical background, she is dedicated to enhancing pain management practices with a specific focus on preventing opioid addiction. She expanded her knowledge in pain research through her DNP scholarly project that focused on improving pain self-efficacy in patients discharged with opioids after surgery. In the midst of the U.S. opioid epidemic, she strongly believes that nurses, as the largest group of health care professionals, should take a leading role in mitigating the opioid crisis.
During her PhD training at Penn Nursing, she will continue to develop her research to improve perioperative pain management while reducing the risks of opioid misuse, abuse, and addiction. She earned her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and her BSN degree from Ewha Womans University in South Korea.