Here are the finalists in the 2015 Health Care Heroes NP/PA category.

Honors an Nurse Practioner or Physician Assistant whose performance is considered exemplary by patients, peers and other health care providers.

Deborah Adams-Wingate

TITLE: Nurse Practitioner

ORGANIZATION: Patient Centered Care

WHAT THE NOMINATOR SAID: “Deborah Adams-Wingate provides primary care with a strong emphasis to high quality care and preventive medicine to patients located in Wilmington and other surrounding areas.

She directly provides care to patients in her office and she also travels into the community. She sees patients in assisted living facilities and has even traveled to patient’s homes to see someone in need.

She is available to her patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and she works long hours daily to ensure her patients have excellent medical care, prescription refills, and referrals to specialists. Ms. Wingate never hurries her patients out of an appointment. She takes detailed notes, listens to concerns, answers questions and spends as much time as necessary with her patients. She likes to provide complete care to her patients every time she meets with them.

She feels very strongly about excellent patient care. So strongly that she spent many, many hours preparing policies, doing reports and filling out documentation so her office could file for and become a NCQA Patient.”

-Christine Rasmussen       
 

Sara Brown

TITLE: FNP

ORGANIZATION: Novant Health

WHAT THE NOMINATOR SAID: “Sara is a caring, compassionate FNP who goes above and beyond in everything she does. As a patient she always makes you feel comfortable and extremely confident in her advice and direction.

I have never met someone so committed to their profession and who approaches every situation with such professionalism and passion.  

She is an incredibly beautiful person inside and out and always has a smile on her face. She has never met a stranger, she is a person who embraces her profession and her life with open arms full of honesty, sincerity, warmth and compassion. If you ever have the opportunity to meet her, your life will be richer for it.

She is so deserving of a special recognition for going beyond expectations to help her patients and anyone else in need!”

-Kathy Brunswick, patient

Julie Lane Frederiksen

TITLE: Psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP)

ORGANIZATION: Trinity Wellness Center

WHAT THE NOMINATOR SAID: “Serving the very delicate and nuanced needs of neurological and psychiatric patients is surely one of the most difficult jobs in the medical profession.

Is a patient’s brain or psychiatric distress genetic? Is it environmental? Will the patient respond to medication? Is some form of cognitive therapy the answer?

The brain is a malleable, constantly changing thing, say researchers. If this is the case, then how can there ever be the guarantee of a permanent, lasting, healing fix for people behaviorally or neurologically troubled?

Despite these challenges, my extremely gifted but humble wife works every day to deliver high quality healthcare to patients of southeastern North Carolina so that they may live a higher quality of life.

I have always known this, but it’s when I see it that I am profoundly moved and sometimes brought to tears.”

-David Frederiksen, spouse