Lake Highlands nurse Joan Colgin reflects on 50-year career in diabetes education

Sunlight filters through the windows of Joan Colgin’s Lake Highlands home near Skillman Street and Church Road as she settles on the couch.

“I never thought about being a physician; it was always about being a nurse,” she says.

For more than five decades, Colgin has spent years advancing diabetes education, leading research programs and helping patients take control of their health before complications arise.

Her path to nursing began before she stepped into a hospital setting as a professional.

When Colgin was just 5 years old, her kidneys had not fully connected to her bladder, leaving surgery as her only option. After spending her childhood surrounded by nurses and doctors, it seemed inevitable she would become a nurse herself.

“Being in the hospital just influenced me,” she explains.

Much of that encouragement also came from her mother.

“My mother used to tell me, ‘Child, growing up, God didn’t put you on this earth to clean toilets and be on the floor — he had higher expectations for you,’” Colgin recalls. “So she encouraged me to go into nursing.”

After graduating from Bishop Lynch High School in 1967, Colgin attended St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, earning her degree in 1970 before later completing her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Texas at Arlington.

She began her career at St. Paul University Hospital in Dallas and later became head nurse of the Intensive Care Unit at Medical City, where she participated in the hospital’s first open-heart surgery.

“I was out one Saturday night and the chief physician called me and said, ‘We’re doing open heart surgery,’ and it was successful,” she recalls.

Yet, it was diabetes that became her life’s work.

As blood glucose monitoring technology emerged, Colgin taught patients how to track their blood sugar levels outside of the hospital, helping them better manage their condition and avoid hospitalization.

“I taught the first patient that was at the hospital how to check sugar, and he was able to stay out of the hospital after that,” she says.

This experience anchored Colgin’s belief that education could keep patients healthier.

Colgin went on to help develop diabetes education and research programs at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, Endocrine Associate of Dallas and Doctors Hospital, worked with children through camps, including Camp Sweeney and Camp New Horizons, joined Novo Nordisk as their executive medical liaison and later became the first female president of the Dallas chapter of the American Diabetes Association. She also previously served on the Dallas Area Agency on Aging Board.

Her advocacy work also extended into state policy when Colgin was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2016 to serve a five-year term on the Texas Diabetes Council, where she worked with legislatures to get Medicare coverage for diabetes medications. Outside of medicine, Colgin serves as the co-chair of the St. Patrick Catholic Church parish pastoral council.

Today, Colgin and her husband, Tony, have called Lake Highlands home for more than 45 years, and looking back at her career, Colgin still believes prevention is one of medicine’s most powerful tools.

“I think my legacy is prevention,” Colgin says. “Whatever you have, whether it’s diabetes, kidneys, so many diseases can be managed for a normal life.”