About Dr. Tom Rodriguez

Tom Rodriguez obtained his undergraduate and Masters education from the University of Texas at Austin in 1988 and 1993 respectively. His Masters Degree was as a clinical nurse specialist in psychiatric and mental health nursing. His minor was psychology with a functional concentration in teaching. After receiving his Masters Degree, Dr. Rodriguez worked as a nurse manager at Austin State Hospital and later as a clinical nurse specialist in psychiatric nursing at Austin Regional Clinic Mental Health Associates. In 1998, he decided to move to Houston to attend a new program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston which prepared nurses for research, teaching, and advanced-practice careers. It was during his doctoral education that he received education and training as an adult primary-healthcare nurse practitioner. In 2004, five years later, he graduated with a Doctor of Science Degree in Nursing (DSN). Shortly after graduation, the program decided to award the Doctor of Philosophy Degree as opposed to the DSN degree since the program was a PhD equivalent (and most people do not know what a DSN entails). Subsequently, Dr. Rodriguez’s degree was reissued as a PhD.

Since the time of his doctoral studies, Dr. Rodriguez practiced as a nurse practitioner for Baylor College of Medicine’s Population Program and as a psychiatric clinical specialist for a psychiatrist in Houston. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Rodriguez was an assistant professor of nursing at Texas Woman’s University for a little over three years. He has also taught at Houston Community College and at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His dissertation research was a randomized, controlled, clinical trial involving two treatments for hypothyroidism. The findings from his research were published in his dissertation and in Endocrine Practice, the Official Journal of the American College of Clinical Endocrinologists. Dr. Rodriguez has also published clinical, research-methodology, and philosophy of science articles in other peer-reviewed journals as well as an abstract on teaching methodologies. Prior to leaving his post at Texas Woman’s University, Dr. Rodriguez received funding from TWU for a qualitative study describing the lives of patients with adrenal insufficiency. This study is still ongoing today. After leaving TWU in 2008, he pursued clinical practice at an internal medicine clinic here in Houston. Most recently in 2009, Dr. Rodriguez turned his attention to establishing a private counseling and psychotherapy practice called Houston Mind-Body Counseling.