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Karen Lyons

Associate Professor

Patients鈥� illnesses often take a physical and emotional toll on their caregiving partners or adult children. Karen Lyons, Ph.D., FGSA, views caregivers and recipients as dyads, or teams鈥攁nd she wants to optimize the health and well-being of them all.

Lyons, who joins Connell after nearly 20 years at Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing in Portland, where she was an associate professor and directed the Ph.D. program, studies family and dyadic experiences of chronic illness. She is particularly interested in how dyads appraise a condition like heart disease or cancer, and how that affects its management.

She explores these dynamics in 鈥淭he Theory of Dyadic Illness Management,鈥� an article developed with Connell School Associate Dean for Research Christopher Lee, which was published in the Journal of Family Nursing in February 2018. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to provoke discussion about what would balancing the health of both people look like?鈥� she notes. 鈥淥ur ultimate goal is to drive the way we support families.鈥�

Lyons, a health psychologist, has published widely across the fields of nursing, gerontology, and psychology and has led or contributed to numerous interdisciplinary studies on dyads and health.

Raised in Dublin, Ireland, she earned bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees at University College Dublin and initially came to the US to pursue a doctorate in human development and family studies at Penn State (1999), then joined OHSU. She鈥檚 excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Connell School faculty around illness management and to teach graduate students.

She says, 鈥淚 really want to give back and mentor future generations of researchers and clinicians.鈥�

Victor Petreca

Clinical Assistant Professor

For the past few years, Victor Petreca, DNP, PMHNP-涩里番下载, CNP, has been caring for inmates with mental illness and immigrants detained in local prisons. He has also been introducing nursing students to these marginalized groups. A psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner, Petreca is now translating his real-world experience in advanced practice nursing and psychopharmacology, and his passion for evidence-based practice, into a full-time clinical teaching role at Connell.

A native of Brazil, Petreca came to the US on a scholarship from Eastern Michigan University, where he earned a bachelor鈥檚 in clinical laboratory sciences/medical technology in 2009. He spent several years performing diagnostic tests at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Curious about the connection between brain chemistry and human behavior, he decided to go into nursing, and earned a B.S.N. and an M.S.N. in psychiatric and mental health lifespan from the MGH Institute of Health Professions. That led to a doctor of nursing practice degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2017.

Starting in 2013, Petreca鈥檚 interest in forensics and character pathology took him to several Massachusetts correctional facilities, where he treated inmates convicted of violent crimes (many with personality disorders, he says) as well as distressed immigrants being held by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Last year, he 鈥減recepted鈥� Connell graduate students at the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction while teaching nursing at Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts.

At Connell, Petreca is teaching Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nursing Across the Lifespan and Psychopharmacology while supervising students in their clinical placements. The academic appointment, he says, is beyond a dream come true. 鈥淐onsidering my background [as a Brazilian immigrant], this really doesn鈥檛 happen to people like me,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just amazing.鈥�