Celebrating Nurses 2009 : Debra Allen
Celebrating Nurses 2009 : Debra Allen
'She takes no credit for the kindness'
Special Sections Writer
As unemployment has risen in Rockingham County, so has the number of people seeking medical care at the Department of Public Health, but nurse practitioner Debra Allen continues to make time to ensure her patients know how to take care of themselves.
"One of the major roles of a nurse practitioner is providing education — making sure the patient is involved in their care," she said. "That includes providing a lot of teaching opportunities so they can take charge of their disease and be able to do the very best that they can and take care of themselves."
Allen, 50, a lifelong Reidsville resident, has been at the health department since 1984. She works with a team of nurses helping patients with a variety of issues. "Patients come in with diabetes, hypertension, thyroid disease, arthritis, and I devise a plan of treatment for those kinds of problems," she said.
But she also looks out for the nurses who work with her, such as fellow nurse practitioner Angela Staab, who nominated Allen as an extraordinary nurse.
"Whenever I get behind in my patient visits, she will quietly take a patient or two so that I am "not too late getting out of the clinic,"" Staab wrote. "She takes no credit for the kindness and won"t even let it be known unless I ask her why she is later than I am! Only then does she sheepishly admit to have helped me with the patient load, which gets worse every day with the economic slump in Rockingham County."
Whether helping to ease coworkers" caseloads or working toward her doctorate in divinity from a Bible college in Greensboro, Allen stays busy. She is active in her church, speaks to community groups about issues of health and spirituality, volunteers at local health clinics and works with nursing students from the University of North Carolina system as a preceptor. Allen decided to become a nurse when she was in seventh grade, and got her own nursing training at UNCG.
"It was during that curriculum that I had public health training, and I knew when I went out into the community that was what I wanted to do," she said. "Following graduation I did go and work in a hospital for a couple of years, but an opening became available in public health and I applied for it."
Nurse practitioners in public health make less than their private-practice counterparts, but Allen finds other rewards in her work.
"Being in a small community, the patients know me," she said. "They see me out at Walmart; they see me at the grocery store. And they"ll come up and acknowledge me. That makes me feel good, that they have not forgotten who I am. And I certainly don"t forget them."
- Debra Allen , Rockingham Co. Health Dept
- Diane Bell, Randolph Cancer Center
- Thomas Brown, Randolph Hospital
- Leslie Butcher, Brenner's Children's Hospital
- Lenora D. Clapp, NC Dept of Corrections
- Cynthia E. Knust, Moses Cone Health Systems
- Marsha Roddenberry, High Point Regional
- Marsha Long, Carolina Medical Center
- Jan Parker, Hospice of Greensboro
- Sarah Turner, Kids Path/Hospice
