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WILKES-BARRE — For Dr. Deborah Zbegner helping the community through service and teaching the next generation of nurses is crucial to the future.
“We need to send people out into the world equipped to battle diseases and help comfort their families,” Zbegner, 60, of Mountain Top said. “This valley is in need of nurses across all agencies.”
Zbegner’s dedication to helping mold the nurses of the future is one of the reasons she was selected to be honored in the Times Leader’s Distinctive Women special section.
Zbegner said that each clinical nursing student is required to do five hours of community service a semester.
“I think it’s really important to be a proactive member in your community,” she said. “One day our students may be treating one of these community members or someone they know as patients.”
Before Zbegner became the dean of the the Passan School of Nursing at Wilkes University, she served as a obstetrical, gynecological and infertility nurse.
“If you (had told) me when I started out that I would have gone on to become the dean of a university department, I would have laughed at you,” Zbegner giggled.
Zbegner has overseen Wilkes’ nursing program since it came to fruition after branching out from the university’s pharmacy program.
“It took a lot of hard work and a big commitment from the faculty,” she said. “It takes a team with a great vision.”
Part of Zbegner’s job is to oversee the nearly 800 nursing students – both undergrad and graduate students – at the school.
After working as a clinical nurse, Zebgner said she needed some time away to spend with and start her family.
“Education gives that outlet,” the Mountain Top native noted. “It’s really a different type of workload. No matter what nursing route you decide, they each bring on a certain amount of stress. That’s why having outlets are important.”
In recent years, Zebgner has seen changes in the nursing field from when her career began in the 1980s.
“When I started, it was expected that women were supposed to do everything, like balance a career, do the cooking and cleaning,” she mentioned. “Now women are starting to realize that and that they don’t have to do everything.
“There comes a certain point in life when you want to do something. Luckily nursing provides that opportunity. You can always hop back in.”
When Zebgner is not planning for the school’s upcoming accreditation or serving as a nurse practitioner one day a week, she has a few hobby’s that help her decompress from her stressful schedule.
But no activity is as important as spending time with her children.
“I have three children, a daughter who lives in Los Angeles and two sons,” the nursing school dean said. “I want to travel and have dinner with them because I don’t always get the opportunity to do so.”
Zebgner considers herself an avid reader and enjoys going to local bowling alley’s to knock a few pins down for fun.
She is also an active member of the PA Coalition of Nurse Practitioners of Northeastern Pa. and is president-elect of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Nursing Schools Association (PHENSA).
To ready more Distinctive Women stories, click here.
