Spartan Nurse Nation: Bethany Ashworth

The first few weeks of transitioning from a nurse to a nurse practitioner (NP) role can be vexing. The additional responsibilities, increased interactions with other providers and building your own patient list can take their toll.

Thankfully, for Bethany Ashworth, her master’s program at MSU prepared her for her first NP role in Georgia and, currently, in her “dream job” as a perioperative anesthesia NP at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“It can be quite scary being an NP, having to now make decisions that you’ve been able to put on someone else’s radar,” said the ’22 graduate of the Nurse Practitioner Program. “You want to be comfortable being able to say, ‘Yeah, I remember this from that lecture.’

Ashworth, a Massachusetts native, found her way to MSU in 2020 when her partner accepted a post-doc position at the university. Previously, she had been working as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse in Boston and then as a travel nurse.

“I absolutely loved peds ICU as a bedside nurse, but I knew when I started thinking down the line about having children, it would not be an ideal fit” she said, adding it can be difficult to not be emotionally invested in patients’ lives, including experiencing sadness alongside families

So, she pursued her MSN, where she developed her critical thinking skills and worked in the simulation lab as a graduate assistant. She especially appreciated her preceptors and faculty, including NP Program Director Kara Schrader.

“The time, effort and money that goes into NP school was 100% worth it,” Ashworth said. “The salary difference, the quality-of-life difference, the opportunities I have been able to get from having an NP degree far exceed my concerns and worries I had in NP school.

After a brief period in Georgia following graduation, family brought her back to the Boston area, where Ashworth says she works with anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, residents and nurses “to make their lives easier,” including charting, helping with IVs, inductions and more. She is starting as adjunct faculty at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in the fall.

She credits grad school with helping to further her career.

“For grad school, I feel like what you put into a graduate level program is what you get out,” she said. “I think MSU gave me a really great foundation.”