“I never set out to be an oncology nurse,” Laura Benson, RN, MS, ANP, admits.

“My internal medicine unit was split between medicine and surgery. I chose medicine because I hated getting fresh post-ops out of bed,” she recalls. But then, her unit was unexpectedly converted into an oncology ward and she quickly fell in love with the specialty. 

Read on to learn more about how Benson, now a member of the Board of Directors with The Nursing Beat and a former executive at multiple pharmaceutical companies, went from bedside nurse to nursing executive.

Where Her Nursing Journey Took a Turn

After falling in love with oncology, she became certified in the specialty and went back to school to earn a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in oncology. Later, she became a nurse practitioner while continuing to work in oncology research.

“Then, my career took an unexpected turn,” she remembers. Benson had a decades-long run working for a series of pharmaceutical companies.

• Schering-Plough: “It turned out that working for Schering-Plough as a nurse educator was something I never thought I would do, but I found myself doing it rather quickly and with great autonomy,” Benson shares.

• Oncology.com: “We had a website that was ahead of its time, offering online support groups, disease information, chemo information, and daily news updates. Unfortunately, we were just a little on the wrong side of the dot-com bubble.”

• Pharmacia: Pharmacia bought the assets of Oncology.com. “I stayed on the medical side at Pharmacia until they were bought by Pfizer.”

• OSI Pharmaceuticals: “Not wanting to stay at Pfizer, a big conglomerate, I joined a small company on Long Island with my former boss from Pharmacia. We developed and launched Tarceva, one of the early oral agents for lung cancer. But then, OSI Pharmaceuticals was bought by Astellas Pharmaceuticals and I didn't want to move to Chicago.”

• Novocure: “Novocure is an Israeli company that made a device to treat brain tumors, a new modality called electric field therapy. I helped build their medical side and eventually retired as Senior Vice President of Global Medical Affairs.”

Breaking Into Nurse Research

“You know those package inserts that come with bottles of medication that are like five pages long? The information in there has to come from somewhere.” 

Behind the medication inserts was Benson and her charting. “How many people have headaches from the medication? How many people have diarrhea? That’s all gleaned from the nurse’s notes,” Benson explains.

Nurses can play a lot of roles in research. If you are looking to get into research, Benson says there are many routes you can take. Benson’s work often involved exploring different uses for a drug beyond how a pharmaceutical company was researching it. 

For example, when she worked at Schering-Plough, they had beta interferon approved for hairy cell leukemia. One GI doctor thought it might work for hepatitis. He did what's called an investigator-sponsored trial, and Schering-Plough provided the grant for him to study interferon in hepatitis patients—now it’s used routinely in hepatitis. We are also seeing drugs like Keytruda, which has now been approved for about 17 types of cancer, or GLP-1 drugs, which are used for diabetes, weight loss, and are now investigated for cardiovascular health. 

Catapulting Into the Nurses on Boards Coalition

A group called the Nurses on Boards Coalition (NOBC), founded in 2014, was designed to increase nurses’ corporate presence. They followed the Institute of Medicine's report stating that nurses need to be integrated into decision-making.  

Benson has always been very active in the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), both locally and nationally. NOBC recruited Benson due to her ONS membership. “The CEO of ONS asked me to be that person because I had both a business and nursing background and would make a good representative for the Oncology Nursing Society,” she explains. 

She served on the NOBC executive committee for ten years, holding positions such as treasurer and secretary.

Interested in joining the NOBC? “There’s no downside to joining,” Benson says. 

It’s free and you can sign up for their newsletter to get alerts about opportunities that align with your interests. They’ll also send free materials developed by experts, like how to serve on a board, create an elevator pitch, and write a personal bio. They even cover fiduciary responsibilities and other aspects of the corporate world that you definitely would not have learned in nursing school. 

What Nursing Board Members Do

In the early days of The Nursing Beat, they were looking for a nurse to join their board. So, they reached out to NOBC. 

After interviewing several candidates, The Nursing Beat asked Benson to join the board. 

Every board is different, but Benson says these are some of the most common responsibilities:

• Understanding the business, inside and out.
• Being able to understand the financial situation of the business, including reading spreadsheets and expense reports.
• Overseeing investment funds and managing portfolios.
• Attending board meetings and participating as appropriate. 

“If you don’t have anything to say, don’t talk,” Benson says, echoing the advice of a former CEO. “If you don’t understand something, ask for clarification.” 

Some board members are compensated, and others receive stipends for necessary travel and meals. They also may have the opportunity to invest early in the company through stock options. 

Rapid Fire Q&A

Virtual CEs or in-person?

In-person.

Favorite way to unwind after work?

A glass of wine.

Favorite pump-up song before work?

“Freedom.”

If you could shadow any nursing specialty for a day, what would it be?

Neurosurgery circulating nurse.

A Fulfilling Career

Even though oncology was not the intended path for Benson, it opened the doors for her with nursing research and changed the shape of her nursing journey.

“I've had a varied and fulfilling career, even if it’s not exactly what I set out to do,” Benson reflects.

Stay tuned for more interviews with nurse executives and leaders by subscribing to The Nursing Beat.