She was licensed as a Registered Nurse in the State of Florida in 1975 and began her practice at West Volusia Hospital (Florida Hospital Deland), working in the intensive care unit. Over the next eighteen years, she expanded her practice to include intensive care staff nursing, shift supervision in a small rural hospital in Missouri, as well as a clinical nursing instructor for the local community college. She further expanded her practice to intensive care management, for a medical and surgical unit, at Methodist Medical Center in Jacksonville Florida.