Christine Griffin, PhD, RN, NPD-BC, CPN

WCSI CCEP® Faculty
WCSI Caritas Coach®
Caritas Leader® Faculty
Master HeartMath Trainer
WCSI Faculty Associate
Caritas Colleague


Christine Griffin is the Director of Caring Science and Nursing Practice at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. As a nurse for over 20 years, Chris has sought to bring love and care not just for the patients and families but for the care providers as each search for health and wellness. Chris is a board-certified nurse in professional development, matching expertise in adult learning with a passion to heal the healers in healthcare. For the past ten years, Chris has developed a resiliency curriculum, presented at national and international conferences on Caring Science and resiliency, and offered Caring Science & HeartMath workshops with healthcare organizations and hospitals around the country.

Chris became a Caritas Coach® in 2010 and a HeartMath trainer in 2011. Now, as a Caritas Coach faculty mentor and master HeartMath Trainer, she hopes to bring theory-guided practices to those working in healthcare so they can have the capacity to flourish as they bring their authentic care and compassion to the bedside. As a Co-Director for the Caritas Leadership Program, Chris has the opportunity to work with healthcare leaders and executives as they re-pattern their authentic selves and learn how to transform their healthcare cultures into safe and healing environments for both patients and staff.

Chris received her nursing degree and master of nursing at Regis University and a Ph.D. at the University of Colorado in the Caring Science track. In her Ph.D. program, “Compassion without fatigue,” Chris studied effective compassion fatigue interventions to decrease burnout, mediate secondary trauma and increase compassion satisfaction for healthcare providers. Chris has a passion to help other healthcare providers build a practice of self-care and self-compassion. Through a shared narrative and experiential learning opportunities, she has learned how to decrease the suffering of those who are called to care for others. Chris has contributed to Caring Science and leadership chapters in the textbooks Caritas Coaching: A Journey Toward Transpersonal Caring for Informed Moral Action in Healthcare (2018), Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice, 5th Edition (2020), and Leadership Roles in Promoting a Resilient Workforce (2022).