Susan R Goins-Eplee, MSN, RN, CNL, HEC-C

Biography

Susan Goins-Eplee, MSN, MDiv, RN, CNL, HEC-C, is a community and public health clinical instructor at UVA. Among the first cohort of UVA School of Nursing's CNL graduates and a former clinical instructor at the School, she previously worked at UVA Health across a variety of roles since 2015, including as a chaplain, a unit nurse, and a member of the hospital's Ethics Consulting team.

A former community and public health nurse with the Jefferson Area Children’s Health Improvement Program, Goins-Eplee is fluent in Spanish and has traveled the world as a clinician and humanitarian with the Building Goodness Foundation and Habitat for Humanity. As a nursing student, Goins-Eplee completed her community health clinical rotation at the Remote Area Medical clinic in Southwest Virginia, and, in the hears since, has returned during the summer to volunteer.

Goins-Eplee earned an undergraduate degree in biology and religion, planning to study medicine but instead earned a master of divinity degree to become a chaplain. Though she’d become a nurse nearly 20 years later, her time as a chaplain, as a cancer patient support services coordinator, and an ethics consultant has provided her with a “foundational launching pad” into nursing.

Mother to an adult with special needs, Goins-Eplee is active with the Virginia Institute for Autism and the Special Olympics, and has a keen interest in helping broaden clinicians’, students’, and citizens’ inclusion and consideration of this important, often overlooked population. CNL-certified and clinical ethics consultant certified, she regularly speaks on grief and bereavement, ethics, cancer, and end-of-life care, and, in her new role, will concurrently teach and continue to serve on UVA Health’s Ethics Consultation and Moral Distress Service, where she’s worked since 1995. Goins-Eplee also notes that she’s a superfan of UVA Women’s Basketball.