Kathleen Wheeler is a Professor of Nursing at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She has practiced as an advanced practice psychiatric nurse specializing in trauma for the past 25 years. She is certified as a Clinical Specialist in Adult Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing and a Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. She has additional certifications in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, hypnosis, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Dr. Wheeler is a leader in projects that are highly significant to the future of psychiatric nursing. She served as co-chair of the National Panel that developed the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) Competencies, co-investigator of a national psychiatric nursing graduate program curriculum survey, and is the author of an award-winning book Psychotherapy for the Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurse. Awards for her book include a 2008 AJN Book of the Year Award and the 2008 American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) Media Award. Other awards include APNA Awards in 2008 for Excellence in Practice, and in 2004 for Excellence in Education. Dr. Wheeler is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and a Distinguished Alumni of Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing where she received her BSN. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in nursing from New York University.