Debbie Winters named
outstanding nurse
by advocacy group
By:Melissa Edmond
Debbie Winters, 52, a HIV clinical nurse specialist in Hillsborough, has dedicated 18 years of her 32-year career in nursing to HIV treatment, prevention and education.
Ms. Winters was recently named a winner of the Outstanding Nurses awards given by TheBody.com, an award-winning HIV/AIDS resource Web site. Ninety-five nurses were nominated for the award and 10 winners were announced on the Web site on April 29.
"I was so surprised when one of my patients nominated me," she said during a break from her work April 21. "For me, it’s very easy. I love what I do. I’m really blessed because so many people don’t."
She said her work with HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, started after she had received her master’s in nursing from Columbia University. She saw a newspaper ad for an AIDS research nurse for Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJ) in New Brunswick.
She had worked in home care and at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation for more than 10 years but she didn’t have a background in research or AIDS, a disease that weakens the body’s immune system and destroys its ability to fight infection.
She was a nurse, though, so she applied. She interviewed, got the position, and fell in love with the work.
"I cannot imagine doing anything else for the rest of my career," she said. "When I landed that job, I knew it was home after the first few weeks. I knew I was going to spend the rest of my career, until my dying day, dealing with HIV."
Ms. Winters also loves working with her boss and mentor, Dr. Ronald G. Nahass. She has worked with him for 18 years. They worked at RWJ on the original clinical trials for AZT (the first medicine manufactured for HIV treatment) for four years. She currently works with him at I.D. Associates at 411 Courtyard Drive in Hillsborough.
"He’s an incredible teacher," she said. "And all that I know today is pretty much from his teaching."
Ms. Winters said that Dr. Nahass founded I.D. Associates in 1990. He asked her to join him in 1991.
They started with 25-50 patients but now have five offices, nine nurses, 14 physicians and 600 HIV patients.
She said I.D. Associates is the largest infectious disease practice in the state.
Nurses are critical, she said. They take a lot of patient phone calls and do a lot of hand-holding. They get the patients through the next day.
"A lot of the time we’re the only ones who know their diagnosis so who else do they have to talk to," she said.
Ms. Winters dedicates herself to HIV prevention and treatment in a lot of other ways beside her work at I.D. Associates. She is one of the founding members of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC), an international group of over 3,000 nurses and health care professionals committed to HIV/AIDS nursing.
Ms. Winters also has part-time positions with NY/NJ AIDS Education and Training Center (NY/NJ AETC) and the International Training and Education for HIV/AIDS (ITECH).
Her work with NY/NJ AETC takes her to clinics in Ccentral New Jersey working with the nursing staff and case managers on teaching HIV and seeing patients.
About once every three months, Ms. Winters travels to Ethiopia for her work with ITECH, seeking out potential nurse leaders to trains so they can in turn train others. She sees their patients with them and educates them to understand the disease and help people live with it.
She said her work in Africa has been her calling, and her long-range goal is to go to Africa for longer periods of time.
"I actually found in the last couple of years my specialty wasn’t as needed anymore in the U.S. HIV has become a manageable, chronic disease here," she said. "When I landed in Ethiopia, it threw me back into a time that I remembered in the 80s."
She said that in Ethiopia alone, about 800 people die each day from AIDS. Hospitals there are lacking basics medicines and manpower.
Nurses there know how to care for the dying, but know nothing about the medicines or the treatment of HIV, Ms. Winters said.
"This is not an issue that’s going to be solved tomorrow," she said. "Human behavior and human nature are the problems in the U.S. I’d love to see that people’s behavior changed."
Ms. Winters said she emphasizes a positive lifestyle with all of her patients. She runs four days a week at 5 a.m. and swims two days a week. She has a group of women she runs with who motivate her. She’s done a dozen marathons and countless triathlons.
She encourages her patients to exercise, see their doctor regularly, and take their medication every day.
"When you are healthy and exercising, your immune system is at its peak that helps t-cells," she said.
She said that she uses working out as her therapy to keep from getting burned out. However, she says burning out has never really been a serious problem for her or the nurses she knows because they chose to work with this disease it was their calling.
"I want to make someone smile again, watch them graduate school, get married, buy a house, do all those things that they never thought they’d be able to do because even today when you tell someone they’re HIV positive, they think death," she said. "If you can get somebody to move through that and go beyond, that is just a gift."
For more information about TheBody.com, visit the Web site (www.thebody.com).

