Shannon Pirrie DNP, MS, CNM

Shannon Pirrie, DNP, CNM is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado College of Nursing and serves as the Specialty Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Education Program. She earned her BSN from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Beth-El College of Nursing in 2010, a MS from the University of Colorado at Anschutz, College of Nursing as a Nurse-Midwife in 2015, and a DNP from the University of Colorado at Anschutz, College of Nursing in 2021.

Shannon joined the University Nurse Midwives practice in 2016 in their Midwifery Fellowship that focused on interprofessional education and global health care. During the one-year fellowship she spent one month in Guatemala at the Trifinio Clinic supporting the practice and training of skilled birth attendants. Following her fellowship, she remained with the practice in a clinical practice faculty position at the clinical instructor rank. She continues to practice in the inpatient and emergency care settings with the University Nurse Midwife practice.

In mid-2019, Shannon joined the CU Family Health Clinic at Sheridan as the nurse-midwife for their maternal-child care team. Sheridan Clinic was Shannon's ideal outpatient practice location as it combined her passion in supporting pregnant and postpartum patients and their families who have recently immigrated to the United States to promote health throughout their lives and have a small team focused on their success in navigating the health system. In 2021 the maternal-child care team expanded to specialize in the care of pregnant patients with substance use disorders.

In June 2020, Shannon became the Specialty Director of the Nursing Midwifery Education Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz, College of Nursing. Throughout the past 4 years of her career her passion to educate and guide students through their midwifery education had grown through precepting, clinical instruction, and didactic course instruction. As the Specialty Director, Shannon focuses on supporting every student to become the midwife they want to be and advocating for education and experiences that will promote each student's success in the program.

During her DNP education, Shannon completed a quality improvement project that focused on increasing access to perinatal mental healthcare by implementing a formal perinatal anxiety screening and referral process. This process used the EPDS-3A perinatal anxiety screening tool at each initial obstetric visit to screen for anxiety risk and if risk was found via this tool or reported by the patient, they were referred to the on-site PROMISE clinic for further mental health care assessment and management.