Donna Riemer is a Board Certified, Psychiatric & Mental Health Nurse, Registered Nurse Consultant, Certified Compassion Fatigue Specialist, and Certified Clinical Traumatologist with over 20 years of clinical nursing experience. Her experiences include mental health nursing,(civil and forensics), with children, adolescents and adults. Ms. Riemer has also had extensive experience working with adults and their families residing in long term care, dementia and end of life care settings. She has provided care in these areas as primary care giver, nurse leader, nurse educator, and nurse manager. Ms. Riemer has also worked as a crisis intervention worker in a shelter for women and children of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence.
As a nurse manager in several of these areas, Ms. Riemer has been a leader in the development and application of programming utilizing primary, secondary and tertiary strategies for reducing violence and trauma. Utilizing a combination of strategies that include communication, emotional self regulation, conflict resolution, and trauma informed care skills, & recovery concepts in a therapeutic milieu, have proven successfull. These programs have resulted in significant reduction in aggressive behaviors thus reducing the need for more restrictive interventions such as restraints and seclusion. Other benefits include the reduction of staff injury and decrease risk of traumatizing both consumers and care providers. Ms. Riemer discussed how to successfully apply less restrictive interventions in a forensic setting in an article entitled Application of Core Strategies: Reducing Seclusion and Restraint Use, that was published in the International Association of Forensic Nursing Journal (IAFN) News Letter: On The Edge, Volume 13, number 3, fall 2007. During the 12th Annual Crisis Conference: Darkness to Light, Crisis to Recovery, held in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin in September, 2008, Ms. Riemer presented a workshop entitled Recovery Focused Interventions: Successful Reduction of Seclusion and Restraint. In an article entitled Creating Sanctuary: Reducing Violence In A Maximum Security Forensic Hospital Unit, published in the IAFN News Letter: On The Edge, Volume 15, number 1, Spring, 2009, Ms. Riemer explains how her treatment team partnered together with consumers to create a sanctuary using recovery focused interventions that resulted in a significant reduction in violence on the unit.
Ms.Riemer was recognized as Nurse of the Year in 2000 for the state of Wisconsin. Awarded
the 2009 International Association of Forensic Nursing Achievement Award for her accomplishments in the field of Forensic Nursing, and recipient of the International Association of Nurses "Top Forensic Psychiatric Nurse" in Madison, Wisconsin in 2010. In addition, she is an active member of the International Association of Forensics Nursing (IAFN), and member of the American Psychiatric Nursing Association (APNA). She has served on the APNA Seclusion and Restraint Task Force in 2007, and the 2008 APNA Workplace Violence Task Force. She was recognized in the September 2008 issue of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment, (PAVE) Newsletter, for her efforts that have resulted in a significant reduction of violence and re traumatization in a forensic psychiatric hospital setting. Ms. Riemer is a member of the State of Wisconsin Trauma Informed Care Advisory Committee which members are charged with the tasks of helping to create a Trauma Informed and Trauma Sensitive Wisconsin.
Take Sanctuary with you and protect it where ever you go!
