Lorry Schoenly, PhD, RN, CCHP-RN, is a nurse author and educator specializing in the field of correctional health care. She provides consulting services to jails and prisons across the country on projects to improve professional nursing practice and patient safety. She began her corrections experience in the New Jersey Prison System where she created and implemented education for nurses, physicians, dentists, and site managers. Before “accidentally” finding correctional healthcare, she practiced in critical care and orthopaedic specialties. Dr. Schoenly actively promotes correctional nursing through social media outlets and increases the visibility of the specialty through her popular blog – correctionalnurse.net. Her podcast, Correctional Nursing Today, reviews correctional healthcare news and interviews correctional health care leaders. She writes a regular column for the CorrectionsOne.com website where she translates health care issues for the custody officer readers. Lorry is co-editor and chapter author of Essentials of Correctional Nursing, the first primary practice text for the correctional nursing specialty, published in 2012. She is the creator of the Correctional Nurse Manifesto: Seven Affirmations to Guide Your Correctional Practice. This short book is used to orient new nurses in many correctional settings. Her book The Correctional Health Care Patient Safety Handbook is an evidence-based guide to implement patient safety practices in the correctional setting. For the past four years she has helped other nurses become nurse educators as a visiting professor in the graduate program of Chamberlain College of Nursing where she teaches in the nurse educator track. When not writing, speaking, and consulting on correctional nursing practice, Lorry can be found reading Jane Austen, exploring civil war battlefields, or building Lego towers with her toddler grandson.
