An HIV clinical nurse specialist is retiring from the NHS after a 36-year career that has mirrored the extraordinary advances in treatment and care for the disease.
Senior nurses at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where Simon Corcos currently works, described him as a constant source of expertise, compassion and hope.
“Simon has dedicated his career to caring for people during some of the most challenging periods in HIV care”
Karen Dawber
The first UK cases of HIV were identified in the latter months of 1981. The first named people to die from AIDS or a related illness were John Eaddie and Terry Higgins, both in London hospitals.
Beginning his nursing career at the Middlesex Hospital in London in the late 1980s, Mr Corcos joined the Charles Bell HIV ward in 1990, only a decade after these initial cases.
It was a time when effective treatments for HIV did not exist and a diagnosis was widely considered a fatal prognosis, with toxic, single-drug therapies, high mortality rates and widespread public stigma.
Mr Corcos said: “At that time, we cared for patients with advanced HIV/AIDS knowing that, despite treating opportunistic infections, they would eventually die. It was an incredibly difficult time.”
He later moved to the pioneering Kobler Clinic in Chelsea, where some of the first HIV medicines were being trialled.
Working as part of a close multidisciplinary team, Mr Corcos helped support patients through a period marked by both clinical innovation and profound loss.
“This was really the formative part of my learning and experiencing HIV care with non-hierarchical medical and nursing teams treating symptomatic HIV patients,” he said.
“This big team effort fostered mutual support and togetherness and hopefully countered the patients’ grim reality with humanity, love, and care,” he noted.
The arrival of combination triple therapy in 1996 saw a move to his first specialist nurse post in East Surrey, with the new drugs helping to transform HIV care and changing the outlook for patients.
“While some of the side effects were dreadful,” Mr Corcos. “Patients survived the illness and started living with HIV having assumed they would die.
“They could now have the chance to plan for a future and it completely changed the way we treated and cared for people,” he added.
After moving to West Yorkshire in 2001, he worked as a police custody nurse, spent a year with GlaxoSmithKline as an HIV adherence nurse in Manchester and was a part-time specialist nurse in Lancaster.
He subsequently joined Bradford Teaching Hospitals in 2006 as an HIV clinical nurse specialist, with advances in treatment meaning people living with HIV could expect a normal life expectancy.
Over the past 20 years, he has helped care for patients registered with the HIV service across the city and district, alongside the dedicated multidisciplinary team of which he is part at St Luke’s Hospital.
Reflecting on his career, which officially ended on 31 July, Mr Corcos said the greatest privilege had been supporting people through every stage of the changing HIV story.
“What an extraordinary change in my working life in HIV treatment and care from a likely death sentence to a normal healthy life expectancy, providing patients take their pills as prescribed,” he said.
“Stable patients with undetectable HIV blood levels can now attend yearly for blood monitoring, have HIV-free babies and cannot transmit the virus to sexual partners,” he noted.
He added: “In clinic, we try to enjoy our patients’ company, have some fun, but of course be serious about the issues addressing HIV in 2026.
“Lastly, we advise people that acquire HIV that they haven’t done anything wrong – it may seem a small point, but it is crucial for the patients’ understanding of their chronic viral infection.”
Trust chief nurse Karen Dawber said: “Simon has dedicated his career to caring for people during some of the most challenging periods in HIV care.
“From the days when there were few treatment options to today’s life-changing advances in medicine, it’s clear he 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 said.
“I am incredibly grateful for everything Simon has contributed over the past 36 years and wish him a long and happy retirement,” added Ms Dawber.