Press Release
Debra Rose Wilson (nee Colvin) of Nashville, Tenn., formerly of Fort Frances, was honoured with the 2017 Holistic Nurse of the Year award at the 37th-annual American Holistic Nurses Association conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif. held June 5-10.
The Holistic Nurse of the Year (HNY) award is intended to recognize AHNA members with outstanding innovation and/or a change in the field of holistic nursing.
It highlights nurses who have been working in holistic nursing for several years, and have demonstrated a commitment towards the holistic nursing’s core values.
Wilson, Ph.D, RN, AHN-BC, CHT, has been a member of AHNA since 2000, and has been providing guided imagery certification to thousands of nurses for more than 20 years.
Wilson is no stranger to AHNA awards. In 2016, she was the recipient of the AHNA Service Award and early in her career, she twice received the Charlotte McGuire Scholarship Award.
Outside of the AHNA, Wilson has been recognized locally and nationally, including the 2016 Faculty Engaged Scholar Award from Tennessee State University.
She also received a commendation from the U.S. Army for providing workshops and training for the Department of the Army, 4203rd USA Hospital Medical Unit in Conference.
Wilson’s specialties in nursing include self-care, stress management, connections between mind and illness, trauma, and inflammatory connections between mind and body.
Currently, she is pursuing her Ph.D in quantum physics in an effort to discover how to better empirically describe quantum energy and its influence on health.
On top of her own education, Wilson also is a nurse educator herself. She has been teaching PNI to psych students for more than 12 years and has developed a free online learning program called “Psych Pharm,” a stress-less method of learning psychotropic drugs.
She is working on turning it into a free app for nursing students (it currently boasts 90,000 users).
Wilson teaches her students from a holistic paradigm and is the driving force behind the development of programs such as the MSN in Holistic Nursing and Pain Management Training with Hypnosis for the Trigeminal Pain Association.
Wilson is a regular speaker locally, nationally, and internationally, has been a keynote speaker several times, and has more than 100 publications and many more presentations.
Her publications and presentations include “Caring for Patients with Mental Health Issues: Strategies for all Nurses, 2nd Edition,” a peer-reviewed book she co-authored.
She also authored a chapter on energy in the “Holistic Nursing: Handbook for Practice, 7th Edition.”
Wilson is very active not only in her career and publications, but also in her local, national, and international communities.
The contributions to her local community include the Nashville Sexual Abuse Center; SHARE (a grief support group for those families who have lost a baby); and breast feeding support.
Internationally, she was invited to be a visiting scholar for the Botswana “I am Proud to be a Nurse” pin project, where she spoke about holistic nursing, stress management, and self-care for nurses.
Nationally with AHNA, Wilson was the nurse planner for the 2015 AHNA annual conference in Branson, Mo., was a member on the 2016 conference committee, and was a member of the current 2017 conference committee.
She will be the nurse planner for the 2018 conference committee.
Wilson also has been a member of two branches of the AHNA’s Education Committee for several years: the Education Approval Committee since 2000 and the Program Approval Committee since 2007.
