Yoonjae Lee, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC is a PhD student at Penn Nursing with a passion for advancing nursing science in pain management. With nearly a decade of 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 advancing scientific knowledge in pain management, with a particular focus on preventing opioid use disorder.
Her research centers on preventing chronic postsurgical pain and identifying strategies to mitigate opioid use disorder among opioid-naïve patients. She is also working on projects exploring the clinical intersections of various types of chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and related biopsychosocial factors. Recognizing that no single factor can fully explain opioid-related outcomes, she focuses on investigating multifaceted dynamics and developing data-driven strategies to prevent opioid-related harms before they occur.
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. She is currently pursuing a Biomedical Informatics Certificate through the Perelman School of Medicine.