Heeyoung Lee considers herself a nursing scholar.

As both a clinician and a researcher, Lee has dedicated her career to asking questions about factors impacting quality of care for patients in the mental health field and finding ways to challenge and change them.

Lee’s trajectory to her current roles began in her native South Korea, where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing. She came to the United States in 2001 and completed her doctorate at the University of Washington School of Nursing in Seattle.

Pursuing her Ph.D. led Lee to discover that while she relished finding answers to her own queries about the mental health field, she needed to interact with patients and their families to know which questions were truly the most important ones to ask. The realization led her to simultaneously train as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner.

Since then, her many successful research projects have focused on behavioral interventions for people with serious mental illnesses. At the University of Pittsburgh, she has taught graduate students in the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner area of concentration and has mentored students for their Doctor of Nursing Practice projects.

She’s worked with students to analyze areas of health care with far-reaching implications, including the effectiveness of telehealth for mental health patients during the pandemic. Beyond delving into such issues, Lee’s favorite thing about her work is when a patient comes to her and says they’re able to more fully live their life because of her.

She also finds joy in the students who follow in her footsteps. “It is possible for them to lose their way in their careers, but as long as they have passion for it, they usually find their way.”