Professor Donna Z. Bliss is a Professor at the University of Minnesota (U of MN) School of Nursing in Minneapolis, MN, US. She is a Horace T. Morse-U of MN Alumni Association Outstanding Teacher. She is the Emerita School of Nursing Foundation Professor in Nursing Research. Professor Bliss’ research focuses on assessing, preventing, and managing incontinence and incontinence associated skin damage. She has 25 years of research experience funded by federal, foundation, and corporate grants and more than 130 publications on these topics. She has presented numerous national and international presentations about her work. She teaches courses in the prelicensure and doctoral programs at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and advises doctoral students.
Professor Bliss received her BSN from Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania and her Masters and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. She had an NIH-funded individual NRSA predoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and an NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. She also completed a fellowship in postdoctoral in aging at the University of Minnesota. She started her clinical experience in critical care and trauma nursing.
Professor Bliss has been honored as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the Gerontological Society of America, and most recently of the Wound Ostomy Continence Nursing Society. She held leadership positions with the International Continence Society (ICS) as chair of the ICS Nursing Committee for two terms and a member of the Standardization Steering Committee and Education Committee. She chaired the committee of 7th ICS-International Continence Consultation conducting the systematic review of the assessment and conservative management of fecal incontinence and related quality of life. She is the chair of the Abstract Committee of the Wound Ostomy Continence Nursing Society and was the Director of its Center for Clinical Investigation for ten years. She is a Board member and ambassador of the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research. She is on the editorial boards of the journals Continence and Applied Nursing Research. She served as an editor of the Incontinence section of Cochrane Reviews and was on the Steering Committee for the Priority setting for faecal incontinence research project.