Round Lake native named Advocate Condell’s 2021 Nurse of the Year

LIBERTYVILLE – Nursing is all Rocio Sanchez has ever wanted to do.

A first-generation immigrant and a first-generation college student, she began working toward her nursing degree while still in high school. It took years, but she earned that degree from Chamberlain College of Nursing in 2016 and soon became a clinical staff nurse for Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville.

Work that hard comes with an appreciation. And for Sanchez, that appreciation has never faltered, even amid a pandemic.

“To say that the last couple of years has been stressful is an understatement,” she said. “It’s something I never would have imagined happening in my career.”

She also never expected to become Advocate Condell Medical Center’s 2021 Nurse of the Year.

The Round Lake native was chosen from among more than 700 nominations on behalf of nurses from a variety of specialties.

Nominations were submitted by clinicians and team members and reviewed by peer committees for blind judging according to each nominee’s passion for patient care, commitment to service, solution-oriented abilities and evidence-based practice.

“I’m very overwhelmed,” Sanchez said. “I wasn’t anticipating or expecting that. It’s very cliche to say, but there are a lot of amazing nurses here at Condell I personally look up to and am inspired by. To think someone would view me in that light was very overwhelming.”

Advocate Aurora Health employs more than 22,000 nurses across the system’s 26 acute care facilities and more than 500 sites of care.

“Presenting Rocio Sanchez with the nomination as Condell’s Nurse of the Year was a true honor,” Condell’s Chief Nursing Officer Rachel Loberg said in a statement. “There’s no task that she isn’t afraid to tackle… Advocate Condell and our patients are blessed to have Rocio as a member of the nursing division.”

As the pandemic unfolded, Sanchez quickly volunteered and trained to work in the Emergency Department and Intensive Care Unit on Advocate Condell’s critical care float team.

Her efforts went beyond the job as she took on roles in shared governance and volunteered as an officer within the Hispanic Nurses Association. She chairs Advocate Condell’s house-wide Shared Governance Council and the Professional Development Committee.

And, just before the pandemic, she traveled to El Salvador on a mission trip, bringing medical supplies and care to an underserved area.

“I’m very passionate about this profession,” she said.

Driven to better the lives of her patients, she’s inspired by experiences in her youth. Sanchez decided to become a nurse at age 7 when she went to her mother’s ultrasound. She and her brother were told they’d be having a little sister.

“I was just mind-blown,” she remembered. “How on earth does she know there’s a little girl? All she did was listen to a heartbeat.”

At age 16, she saw a nurse care for her mother, who had just had a kidney removed. The nurse made her mother feel so comfortable.

“I just realized the impact of a nurse,” Sanchez said. “They can truly leave an imprint on a patient. When patients are here, they’re in the most vulnerable of states.”

She sees her job as going beyond the bedside and hopes to set a good example for her three children, 13-year-old twin sons and an 11-year-old daughter.

Throughout the pandemic, Sanchez has become even more inspired by her profession, a profession she believes offers a wealth of diverse opportunities in various specialties.

Getting through the pandemic has taken coping skills and resources nurses are trained to use, said Sanchez, who feels fortunate to only just recently have acquired COVID-19, and it was a mild case.

Whether it’s getting enough sleep, exercise, the right nutrition or using other coping mechanisms, nurses must take care of themselves first before they can care for their patients, she said.

“Although the times were full of fear and the unknown, especially at the beginning, and they were stressful,” she said. “Having that strong feeling of teamwork and of everyone coming together… being flexible and being there for one another was impactful.

“I’m a huge advocate for the nursing profession as a whole. I feel like it’s an incredible profession. It’s very distinct in that you can truly impact the life of an individual.”