Brooke Finley, PhD, DNP, RN, PMHNP-BC, CARN-AP, APHN-BC

Bio

Brooke A. Finley, PhD, DNP, RN, PMHNP-BC, CARN-AP, APHN-BC, is a clinician-educator-scholar-researcher, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, triple board-certified nurse practitioner, and associate professor of clinical nursing at the University of Rochester School of Nursing where she teaches psychiatric mental health nursing in the graduate and undergraduate programs. Finley focuses on helping all nursing students to grow in fostering therapeutic-alliance vis-a-vis the nurse-patient relationship and for those who are specializing in advanced practice mental health nursing, enhancing their psychotherapy practice, diagnostic and assessment formulation, and reflective practice.

Her scholarship explores how unconscious processes influence relationships between healthcare workers and patients, perpetuate workplace trauma, and organize group and institutional defenses within healthcare settings. Grounded in more than a decade of frontline nursing and advanced clinical practice, her work seeks transformative change that moves beyond surface reforms to address the deeper psychological and moral dimensions of care. Finley is often invited as a speaker at regional and national mental health conferences.

Finley holds numerous leadership roles within the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) where she founded and chairs the Advanced Practice in Nursing Committee and is also Membership Committee Co-Chair. Also, she founded and maintains the Western New York Psychoanalytic Library.  Finley is on the Editorial Board for The Journal of Psychiatric Nursing Mental Health Nursing (JPMHN). She is currently in the process of co-authoring an academic textbook about psychoanalysis and nursing. 

In addition to her university role, Finley maintains a vibrant clinical practice and has a part-time boutique private practice in Canandaigua, New York. She provides psychoanalytic psychotherapy to individuals, couples, families, and groups, with particular expertise in complex trauma, addiction, relational struggles, personality organization, anxiety, and mood disorders, as well as thoughtful psychotropic deprescribing when appropriate.

Collectively, she is committed to professional growth and educating the next generation of nurse clinicians to provide holistic care, including psychotherapy, improving the relational health of healthcare workplaces, enhancing nursing workforce resilience, and advancing scholarship rooted in lived clinical reality.