Dr. Hansen had her first private practice in the late 1980s in New Haven, Connecticut. Training and experience in the Yale system were varied with inpatient therapy, outpatient therapy, PTSD research, and program evaluation. This culminated in a research faculty position in the Yale Psychiatry Department until 1994 when she moved to Louisiana to teach at Northwestern State University. She began a private practice of Clinical Psychology in Natchitoches beginning in 1995. She underwent further training by the California School of Professional Psychology in Clinical Psychopharmacology as political work progressed to pass a law for the prescriptive authority of specially trained Psychologists. In 2005 she began providing an additional service to her patients as a Medical Psychologist, prescribing. In 2008 she was recruited to work for the Alexandria VA Medical Center and transferred to the outpatient clinic when it opened in Natchitoches. In the VA system, she still does some teaching as a trainer of other providers in Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD.