During her undergraduate education she was drawn to the study of medicine, compelled by the opportunity to spend the rest of her life learning and advancing.

As her parents did not agree with her career choice and therefore would not fund her studies, she was tasked with paying her own tuition by working as an obstetrical nurse, an anatomy demonstrator, and a schoolteacher.

In 1902, despite opposition from male faculty she became a clinical gynecology professor at the Illinois University Medical School, a position she would hold for 10 years.

[3] Not long after, in 1918, her work won the respect of male colleagues and earned her position as Acting Head and Professor of Obstetrics at Loyola University Medical School.

In 1929 she traveled via the Spanish liner Alfonso XIII with her sister Alice and was invited to Florence to meet with Pope Pius XII.

In the year following the death of her mother, Bertha traveled with Alice and her niece Sarah via Honolulu to New Zealand, Australia and then to China and Japan.

[15] The Bertha Van Hoosen Award is given annually by the American Medical Women's Association to a woman who has served the organization greatly with her contributions.