Donna Helen Crisp, JD, MSN, RN, PMHCNS-BC

Retired Faculty

Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460

Donna Helen Crisp, JD, MSN, RN, PMHCNS-BC, became a nurse in 1992, after working in social work, law, and music.  After earning her BSN and MSN degrees, she became a board certified mental health Clinical Nurse Specialist in adult psychiatry.  She has worked with clients of all ages in various hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics, homes, and private practice.  Whether in the role of staff nurse, supervisor, administrator, consultant, or teacher, her nursing practice focuses on compassionate care.

After teaching in the community college system for five years, Crisp became an assistant professor at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing, where she taught for six years in the undergraduate and graduate programs.  Her favorite course to teach was the annual Ethical Issues in Nursing Practice.  Her nursing research has focused on chronic illness, suffering, quality of life, advance directives, ethical decision-making, and forgiveness.  She has taught on these topics at numerous conferences. Her abiding passion continues to focus on the recognition and amelioration of suffering, wherever it exists.

Crisp lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she works as a psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist for a major medical center.

Crisp’s memoir about surviving medical errors was published by Sigma Theta Tau International in 2016: Anatomy Of Medical Errors: The Patient In Room 2.