Katherine Heinze

Dr. Katherine Heinze: A Career Built on Caring, Compassion, and Moral Resilience

Volunteer work in a pediatric unit and a friendship with a young leukemia patient inspired Dr. Katherine Heinze to pursue a career in nursing.

Now an Assistant Professor at the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, Dr. Heinze was a junior volunteer at a community hospital during her high school years. She was assigned to the pediatric unit and loved spending time with the kids and watching the nurses work.

“We occasionally had pediatric patients with cancer diagnoses on the unit, and I became good friends with a little girl with leukemia,” Dr. Heinze said. “She taught me about caring and friendship and gave me a vision for who I could be as a nurse.”

When she went to nursing school, Dr. Heinze knew she wanted to work in pediatric oncology. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Colorado, she began working at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in the Pediatric Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant Unit.

“It was thrilling to be a nurse in one of the nation’s top hospitals while developing my skills,” she said. “It was such a privilege to know and care for children with cancer – their courage, wisdom, and joy will always be a part of me.”

After seven years at Hopkins, Dr. Heinze left to enroll as a full-time PhD student at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Her dissertation focused on parent and family self-management after a child’s bone marrow transplant. Upon completing her PhD, Dr. Heinze did a postdoctoral fellowship in bioethics. During that time, she was invited to participate in a project to develop an instrument to measure moral resilience in healthcare interprofessionals.

“Today, my research revolves around moral resilience, ethics, and caring science. I carry the stories of my patients with me, and they still inspire and guide me,” Dr. Heinze shared.

Dr. Heinze is currently using her instrument to study the relationship between moral resilience and self-compassion among nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “VA nurses care for service members, and I want to help the nurses feel cared for as well,” she noted. She is also working on a project to find what matters most to young women with breast cancer and is starting a collaboration with a College of Nursing data scientist Dr. Debarshi Datta to analyze a dataset with pediatric oncology variables.

Dr. Heinze enjoys teaching and mentoring nursing students along with sharing her passion for caring science. She appreciated the chance to collaborate with many wonderful researchers over her career. “Since coming to Florida Atlantic, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many of our wonderful faculty, such as Dr. Charlotte Barry and Dr. Beth King,” she added.

As faculty on Dr. King’s Health Resources and Services Administration grant designed to give students clinical experiences in community health, Dr. Heinze has been able to spend a lot of time providing health care services in rural and underserved areas of the county.

“We’ve done health fairs, visited daycare centers, and created educational programs for the Salvation Army,” she shared. “It is a privilege to come to know community members and work together to increase the well-being of Palm Beach County residents.”

Dr. Heinze hopes her research will further a culture of caring in healthcare. “I believe that we have a duty to shape our healthcare systems to be a caring and supporting place for healthcare professionals, staff, patients, and family members,” she noted.