Bio
Chelsea O. P. Hagopian, DNP, APRN, AGACNP-BC, is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and serves as Executive Director for the Georgia Nursing Workforce Center, which uses data and community building to tell and actively shape the story of nursing in Georgia toward a shared vision of a sustainable Georgia nursing workforce with a strong sense of professional mattering.
Her clinical nursing background began in perioperative nursing as a circulator and scrub nurse, and she has practiced clinically in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery as a registered nurse and an ANCC board-certified adult-gerontology acute care nurse practitioner for over a decade.
Hagopian holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice in Health Systems Leadership and is a nationally recognized scholar in informed consent, nursing ethics, and professional identity formation, with a sustained record of peer reviewed publications across nursing, plastic surgery, and nursing philosophy journals. Her more recent focus includes looking at experiences of suicide-related survivorship among nurses and nursing students.
Her doctoral work produced an evidence based development process model for creating certifiable patient decision aids designed to replace traditional informed consent documents in elective aesthetic procedures, challenging traditional consent paradigms that privilege legal sufficiency over patient understanding and decision quality. In collaboration with The Aesthetic Society, she piloted this model to develop a patient decision aid for primary breast augmentation surgery, listed in the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute’s international Inventory of Decision Aids. She has testified before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on informed consent and continues to contribute policy relevant scholarship addressing false, deceptive, and misleading medical advertising and ethics in aesthetic medicine and plastic surgery.
She leads statewide and national efforts to collect, analyze, and disseminate nursing workforce data and actively engages in collaborative work to publish first of kind nursing workforce reports for the Georgia. Her current national leadership includes co-chairing a national collaborative through the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers advancing standardized approaches to nursing school graduation exit surveys and alumni surveys for assessing the value and impact of nursing education and long-term retention of nurses in the workforce, profession, and state.
Hagopian’s broader work increasingly centers on nursing workforce data, and she is frequently engaged in public facing scholarship, media commentary, and invited national forums.
Areas of Interest
- Informed Consent
- Nursing Ethics
- Plastic And Reconstructive Surgery Nursing
- Teaching and Learning
Teaching
Hagopian currently teaches in the pre-licensure Master of Nursing programs. Her teaching reflects her belief of the keen importance of preparing students to exercise their nursing voice through actions of advocacy and activism in service of the persons and people with whom they care, of self, and of the profession of nursing.
Her most important teaching goals include fostering students’ formation of their professional identity in nursing and sense of professional mattering and strengthening their nursing voice to speak up when recognizing concerns, cues to phenomena of concern to nursing, and in what matters to them, and to effectively be and feel heard when doing so.
Research
Hagopian has authored peer-reviewed publications on ethics and informed consent in the nursing and plastic surgery literature and has participated in panel discussions on informed consent and the future of health care ethics. Her doctoral work focused on improving the effectiveness of informed consent in elective aesthetic procedures, which culminated in an evidence-based development process model for creating patient decision aids (PDA) designed specifically to replace traditional informed consent documents in elective aesthetic procedures. She continued her doctoral work to create a PDA for primary breast augmentation surgery in collaboration with The Aesthetic Society as a member of The Aesthetic Society Informed Consent Task Force.
Publications
- Ozturk, N.K., Bienemy, C., Delaney, C.W., Forcina, J., Hagopian, C.O.P, Hitt, J., Young, L.K., & Reid,
M. (2026). Vital signs: A trend analysis of the nursing faculty workforce. Journal of Nursing Regulation.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnr.2026.01.006 - Owens, R.A., Kuhl, L.M., Hagopian, C.O.P., Goodolf, D.M., Ferrell, C., Liebig, D., Howard, M.S., Weybrew,
K.A., Yockey, J. (2024). Strengthening the profession: Clarifying professionalism and professional identity in nursing. American Nurse Journal, 19(9), 14-19. https://doi.org/10.51256/ANJ092414 - Hagopian, C.O.P. (2024). False, deceptive, and misleading marketing of nonsurgical medical aesthetic
devices: A nursing informed policy brief. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 29(3).
https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol29No03PPT78 - Hagopian, C.O.P. (2024). From informed to empowered consent. Nurs Philos, 25(1):e12475.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12475 - Hagopian, C.O., Hagopian, T.M., Wolfswinkel, E.M., Ades, T.B., Stevens, W.G. (2021). An expert consensus study for informed consent in primary breast augmentation surgery. Aesthet Surg J, 41(4), NP162–NP176. https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjaa341
- Hagopian, C.O., Ades, T.B., Hagopian, T.M., Wolfswinkel, E.M., Stevens, W.G. (2020). Attitudes, beliefs, and practices of aesthetic plastic surgeons regarding informed consent. Aesthet Surg J, 40(4), 437-447. https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjz206
- Hagopian, C.O. (2019). Ethical challenges with nonsurgical medical aesthetic devices. Plast Surg Nurs, 39(1), 5-9. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSN.0000000000000253
Awards & Affiliations
- 2025, Excellence in Innovation (Faculty & Staff Awards), Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University
- 2025, Mary Jane Seacole Award: Help for Healthcare Professionals, Champion of Workforce Development, Glam & Gratitude Gala, 2025
- 2022, Heart of the Students Award (selected by the graduating MN cohort), Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University
- 2022, Recent Graduate Award, Emory Nurses’ Alumni Association