In addition to holding two doctorates, Austin, Texas, nurse practitioner and nursing program director Dr. Rhonda Winegar also is a prolific author.

The most recent accomplishment for the 1987 Kingfisher graduate is a peer-reviewed clinical research article selected for publication in the Journal of Nurse Practitioners entitled “Investigating Vitamin D and Sleep Quality.”

The article is also her dissertation topic for the PhD in nursing Winegar earned in 2020 from St. Louis University.

The research topic arose from a discovery Winegar made while working as a family nurse practitioner at a sleep clinic in Austin.

“One of my patients was exhausted and falling asleep while at work, driving a car and just sitting,” she said.

After testing, the patient was diagnosed with narcolepsy, the clinical name for the extreme tendency to fall asleep during the daytime.

Following common protocol, the patient was prescribed a stimulant at increasing dosages, but that had no effect, Winegar said.

He was next tested and diagnosed with sleep apnea and began using a CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machine at night .

“He was still no better,” Winegar said. “Still falling asleep all the time.”

Even after taking a medicine specifically designed to treat narcolepsy (with a $6,000 per month price tag), the patient showed no improvement.

“I was grasping at straws and trying to figure out why he was not responding to my treatment,” Winegar said.

“As a last ditch effort, I checked his Vitamin D level and it was at a 4 (extremely low), she said.

After a hefty dosage of 50,000 units of Vitamin D weekly, the patient started feeling better, she said.

His Vitamin D level rose to recommended levels within a few months. His sleep apnea resolved, along with his depression and anxiety, and he lost 30 pounds, Winegar said.

“He started sleeping much better and could stop using his CPAP,” she said. “He still has narcolepsy, but is doing very well on the medication to treat it.

“I then started checking Vitamin D on all my sleep apnea patients.

“Once I started researching everything Vitamin D does, I was amazed and also dismayed that no one really takes it seriously,” she said.

The research paper that resulted became the dissertation for her second doctorate degree (a doctorate of nurse practitioner was her first.)

Just getting through the dissertation process is no easy feat, and follows two to three years of coursework that is also writing intensive, Winegar said.

Once coursework is completed, Winegar was subjected to written comprehensive exams (“Translation – get ready to be killed!” she said.)

Those exams consist of 10-page papers written in response to each of three essay questions, which must all be completed within a five-day period.

Students surviving that process have another two semesters to prepare for oral comprehensive exams.

“For this joyous occasion, you get five professors who lock you up in a classroom and throw questions at you on any topic from your proposed dissertation to anything you have had in any of your classes,” she said.

Only after she passed both written and oral exams was Winegar released to begin researching and writing her dissertation, typically at least a three-year process, she said.

After constant consultation and redirection by an eight-member dissertation committee, Winegar completed the 176-page paper.

Then came the fun of presenting and defending it before an even larger group of people before the committee voted to approve it.

And all of that happens before it is even submitted for publication, another lengthy process of edits, rewrites, and peer review.

What’s surprising is Winegar has been through the rigorous dissertation process not once, but twice, and has a string of other published papers to her name, along with one book

Given her strenuous academic and professional background (she’s also a military veteran), you might expect that her book would be a textbook or other scholarly tome.

But, it’s actually the first in a planned series of illustrated children’s books based on her mother’s pet cat: “The Adventures of Vito, the Beach Cat.”

And she also is the proud owner of two matching Scottish terriers who are card-carrying members of the Screen Actors Guild and appear in commercials for a heat-and-air company.