Healing for healers

Tara Dillon received the 2025 President’s Student Leadership and Service Award for her service with Re LAB, a forensic nursing workforce development project.

Before enrolling in the Master of Nursing (MN) program in 2020, Tara Dillon was a two-time Gopher alumnus and had nearly a decade of University of Minnesota counseling and instruction experience. 

She wanted to expand her knowledge of mental health and felt called to what she described as nursing’s “social justice and equity lens.”

“I wanted to work in spaces that were outside the privilege of higher education and be more connected with my commitment and interest in social justice and equity,” Dillon says.

Embarking on the 16-month MN program in 2020, during the COVID pandemic, was no small feat. While completing coursework virtually, Dillon and her cohort bonded over adapting to ever-changing academic and health care environments. A capstone clinical experience in an M Health Fairview critical and complex care unit challenged Dillon to synthesize her new nursing knowledge and fine-tuned counseling skills.

“Going to clinicals while being concerned about the safety impacts for me and my family was intense. I had two young kids at home — one who was doing virtual kindergarten. It was a lot, and it was also incredibly meaningful,” Dillon says. “I was working on the frontlines of critical, complex care during the pandemic and seeing the tremendous toll on our health workforce, our patients, their families and communities.”

Drawing on her background in trauma-informed counseling for sexual assault survivors, Dillon initially considered forensic nursing. This early interest as an MN student led her to Re LAB: Strengthening Forensic Nursing, a workforce development project led by Professor Carolyn Porta, PhD, MPH, RN, SANE-A, FAAN, FNAP.

“This is when I really started to hone in on my interest in supporting nurses and other health professionals doing this work,” Dillon says. “So much emphasis is put on trauma-informed care of patients but in my educational experience, almost none on the nurse, the one doing the caring.”

The workforce development project exposed Dillon to new educational and professional opportunities, from grant-writing and publishing to teaching nurse leaders to create systemic change. 

After completing her MN program, Dillon continued to notice mental health impacts on both patients and staff.

“You could feel the dysregulation everywhere. I was part of codes and really hard situations where there was no care for the staff afterward. You were just expected to return to your shift,” Dillon says. “I would also have other staff asking me to come in and help calm a patient down or help a patient regulate their nervous system.”

Dillon’s therapeutic knowledge was strong, and she wanted a deeper understanding of medication and physiology to expand the scope of her practice. After evaluating the differences between Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) and PhD programs with advisers and professors, Dillon knew that she wanted an applied program like the psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner program that would allow her to practice, teach and conduct research.

Since starting the DNP program, Dillon has continued to be involved with Re LAB as the project has developed new initiatives like a forensic nurse mentoring program and a sexual assault nurse examiner residency program. Her DNP scholarly project focuses on adding trauma-informed care of self to forensic nurse training, which has drawn on quality improvement analysis and evaluation metrics she’s gathered through Re LAB. 

In May, the University awarded Dillon the 2025 President’s Student Leadership and Service Award, among the highest student honors, in recognition of her service with Re LAB. 

“It was a reflective moment of looking back at what I’ve been able to do, what I’ve been supported to do, and what I’ve done in connection and collaboration with others at the U of M,” Dillon says.

Dillon continues to value the mentorship and knowledge-sharing she’s received through her School of Nursing education. Her project adviser, Associate Professor Sarah Hoffman, PhD, MPH, RN, hosts monthly meetings with her advisees, allowing Dillon to learn from DNP and PhD students from different specialties. 

Following her program, Dillon hopes to serve in an outpatient role that combines medication management and psychotherapy. Participation in the Interprofessional Geriatric Case Competition introduced Dillon to the potential of working in geriatric psychiatry, a field she hopes to explore in a clinical placement this year.

Her most recent clinical rotation with Associate Professor Megan Voss, DNP, APRN, PMHNP-BC, CNP, at M Health Riverside Psychiatry Clinic, has illuminated potential next steps for Dillon in her career. “I’ve been able to really visualize myself in a future role,” Dillon says — one that allows her to blend the full scope of her clinical practice with teaching and research.

“A thread for me for a long time has been this piece of trauma-informed care of self and others,” Dillon says. “How can we help nurses and health care workers focus on themselves so the work is sustainable?”