Nurse Anesthesia (M.S.N.)

Instructor I & Program Director Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program
Phone: (239) 590-7589
E-Mail: basorian@fgcu.edu
Office: BHG 235

Current Teaching Assignments:
     · Critical Care Nursing
     · Simulation Labs
     · Acute Care Didactic and Practicum I-IV

Barbara Asorian is a board certified Acute Care Nurse Practitioner who joined FGCU in 2009. She has over 30 years of experience both as a clinician and educator in critical care and cardiothoracic surgery. 

Barbara is a 1981 graduate from the University of Delaware with a Bachelors Degree in Nursing. In 1986, she received her Maters Degree in Nursing as a Cardiopulmonary Clinical Nurse Specialist from the University of Pennsylvania and in 1994; she received her post Masters Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner. In fact, she was the second graduating class of ACNP’s in the country!

Her first job was at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a staff nurse on the cardiopulmonary unit.  She went on to work at the Deborah Heart & Lung Center in Browns Mills, New Jersey for over 13 years. First, as a staff nurse and preceptor in the Cardiothoracic Surgical Intensive Care Unit then as the Cardiopulmonary Clinical Nurse Specialist and  Nurse Educator for the Cardiothoracic Surgical Intensive Care Unit, Medical Intensive Care Unit, and the Operating Room.

As an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, Barbara was the Clinical Coordinator for the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery & Transplantation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She had both inpatient as well as outpatient responsibilities and was one of the first ACNP’s in the Los Angeles area to obtain Hospital privileges.

Barbara has held faculty positions teaching graduate CNS and ACNP nursing students from the University of Pennsylvania, California State University, University of Southern California, & UCLA. She has also presented both locally and nationally at nursing conferences speaking on diverse topics in cardiothoracic surgery as well as negotiating practice and getting started as an ACNP. She was a contributing author to the first reference textbook for ACNPs entitled “Principles of Practice for the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner.”

Currently, Barbara maintains a clinical practice both as a staff nurse in the open heart intensive care unit at Health Park Medical Center and as an ACNP for a Hospitalist Group.