Karen Sheffield O'Brien attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, graduating in 1993 with her BSN. She has varied nursing experience, including medical/surgical, ICU, PACU, and homecare. Karen attended the MSN and Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Texas Medical Branch, becoming certified as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner Spring 2003. Karen returned to SFASU, accepting a position teaching pediatrics and senior med/surg. Karen and her family were long time East Texas residents, but moved to Lake Jackson in Summer 2004 to enable Karen to pursue her doctorate full time. Karen’s dissertation was titled “Nursing Students’ Utilization of Personal Digital Assistants.” After completing her PhD in Fall 2008, she accepted a full time teaching position at UTMB until moving to Brazosport College in Fall 2010. Dr. O’Brien also worked as a Nurse Practitioner at Methodist Sugar Land Hospital until 2014. In 2015, Karen chose to work as an NP full time, starting this change at St. Luke's Sugar Land for about a year, retaining contract faculty positions with TWU, UTMB, and intermittently with Elsevier. She currently works as an ACNP for Memorial Hermann Sugar Land's ICU/IMU and teaches full time for the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.