Dr. Sarah Schirmer, DNP is a board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner and has over 20 years of experience working in mental health care. She began her career as a licensed professional clinical counselor providing individual and family therapy to children and families after completing a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Louisville in 2006.
She graduated the accelerated, second-degree Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Eastern Kentucky University in 2010 and, while working as a RN in cardiopulmonary and neurological rehab and home health settings, went on to earn her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree in the psychiatric-mental health track at the University of Kentucky in 2015.
Dr. Schirmer, DNP is board certified by the ANCC to provide psychiatric mental-health treatment across the lifespan. She is licensed in Kentucky and has been working as an APRN in the mental health outpatient setting since 2015. She is an assistant professor at The University of Louisville’s School of Nursing where she teaches in the graduate school and co-coordinates the psychiatric-mental health track. Dr. Schirmer, DNP is also vice chair of Kentucky’s Eating Disorder Council representing the Kentucky Association of Nurse Practitioners and Nurse Midwives.
Dr. Schirmer, DNP has extensive experience treating a wide variety of psychiatric conditions. For the past 4 years she has specialized in providing medication management in a collaborative setting to patients diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and eating disorders (ED). Additionally, she has experience with the treatment of conditions that can co-occur with OCD and ED such as mood disorders, generalized anxiety, health and medication anxiety, trichotillomania, ADHD, PTSD, and substance use disorders. She offers various treatment modalities such as medication management, evidence-based psychotherapy for some conditions and problems, and pharmacogenetic testing. She uses a strengths-based approach and works collaboratively with patients and families as well as other treatment providers.