Nursing with a psych lens | Dr. Ashley Darcy-Mahoney

Ashley Darcy-Mahoney, PhD, NNP, FAAN, a neonatal nurse practitioner and researcher, has worked throughout her career to advance nursing research, education and practice, with a focus on neonatology, infant health and developmental pediatrics. Her research has led to the creation of programs that improve health and developmental outcomes for at-risk and preterm infants.  

As an associate professor of nursing and the director of infant research at George Washington University’s Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, Dr. Darcy-Mahoney advances the body of research in infant health and developmental outcomes in high-risk infants with a focus on understanding the early brain and development trajectories in this population. In addition to her work with the institute, she conducts interdisciplinary research through “Talk With Me Baby” a multi-agency initiative using the nursing workforce to educate parents in the importance of talking and engaging with their babies in early infancy. 

Dr. Darcy-Mahoney is a Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Nurse Faculty Scholar and with her most recent grant from the RWJ Foundation, she is pursuing outcomes research in preterm infants by comparing developmental trajectories of children raised in a bilingual environment against those raised in a monolingual environment. She was named among the Top 25 Pediatric Nursing Professors by nursepractitionerschools.com and has earned numerous awards.

In this episode, we cover:

• Ashley's beginnings in nursing and in pre-med
• Why she ultimately chose nursing with neonates as a specialty
• What can you do as a nurse? Where do nurses work?
• How can I figure out if nursing is the right path for me?
• If it is the right path for me, how do I begin if I didn't study nursing in college?
• The economic and career benefits of a Master's (NNP) and PhD in Nursing - we talk salaries (here is the data Ashley talked about during the episode:  https://www.aanp.org/news-feed/2017-national-nurse-practitioner-sample-survey-results)
• Cross disciplinary work as a nurse
• Med school vs. nursing
• The association between preterm birth and cognitive/health risks
• Programs that have been developed to improve infant outcomes
• How a psych lens helps when working with families
• The most rewarding and most difficult parts of her job
• Self-care as a clinician

... and some more.   

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Music by: Adam Fine