Nurse retires after 36 years on front line of HIV treatment

A specialist nurse who started his career at the height of the HIV crisis is retiring after 36 years.

Simon Corcos, a nurse at Bradford Teaching Hospitals' HIV Clinic, began his career at Middlesex Hospital in London in the late 1980s when there was no treatment for the disease.

But over the past four decades he has seen a transformation in outcomes for patients with HIV - from what he describes as a "death sentence to a normal healthy life expectancy".

He says all patients are now told they "haven't done anything wrong" but in the early days "fear and ignorance" were a major obstacle to understanding the disease.

"After 40 years, in this country we are still talking about stigma. I like to think I've tried to normalise HIV as a chronic illness, which it is. So, people can live their lives and feel normal about having it."

HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, weakens the immune system and increases the risk of serious illness, according to the NHS.

It is spread by infected body fluids getting into the bloodstream.

Aids (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), or late-stage HIV, is the name for a collection of serious illnesses caused by HIV, and there is currently no cure.

In 2006, Corcos joined Bradford Teaching Hospitals and has spent the past 20 years caring for several thousand patients at St Luke's Hospital. He retired on Friday.

Corcos joined the Charles Bell HIV ward at Middlesex Hospital in 1990, treating patients with no effective medications.

"It was an incredibly difficult time for patients, families and colleagues," he says.

"I went to quite a few funerals over that period of time."

He then worked at the Kobler Clinic in Chelsea, where some of the first HIV medicines were being trialled, which he describes as a "formative" part of his learning.

The arrival of combination triple therapy in 1996 transformed care from a terminal illness to a more manageable long-term condition and Corcos moved to his first specialist nurse post in East Surrey.

"While some of the side effects were dreadful, patients survived the illness and started living with HIV having assumed they would die," he says.

"They could now have the chance to plan for a future and it completely changed the way we treated and cared for people."

After moving near to Hebden Bridge in 2001, Corcos worked as a police custody nurse, spent a year with GlaxoSmithKline as an HIV adherence nurse in Manchester and was a part-time Clinical Nurse Specialist in Lancaster.

Five years later, he joined Bradford Teaching Hospitals as an HIV Clinical Nurse Specialist where he has treated thousands of patients.

Corcos says "love for the patients" helped him throughout his career.

"Having a sense of humour is really important and I find that in clinic with patients as well. If you can't laugh at grim stuff, then you've lost the plot."

Chief Nurse Karen Dawber says Corcos has been "a constant source of expertise, compassion and hope for patients and families".

"His career reflects not only the remarkable progress in HIV treatment, but also the enduring values of the nursing profession: kindness, courage and a commitment to putting patients first," she says.

"I am incredibly grateful for everything Simon has contributed over the past 36 years and wish him a long and happy retirement."

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.