Nurse recognized as Advocate Christ Medical Center’s Nurse of the Year

With a passion for mentorship, growth and compassion, Nicole Calderon, a nurse at Advocate Christ Medical Center, was selected as a 2024 Nurse of the Year for her exemplary demonstration of Advocate Health Care’s core nursing values and unwavering delivery of best-in-class care.

Jane Dus, Senior Vice President, Chief Nursing Officer of Advocate Health – Midwest Region shares, “Advocate Health nurses are committed to delivering exceptional, evidence-based and equitable care for all. It is a true honor to witness the remarkable impact they make in transforming lives through innovative and compassionate care every day.

Calderon is a cardiac care nurse at Advocate Christ Medical Center since 2019, but she’s known she wanted to become a nurse since childhood.

I wanted to bring life and hope back to those who felt they had no one to turn to,” Calderon said. “I always told myself that I would do my best to care for others and strive to be someone who can make a difference in their life, even if that's for just one moment.”

Calderon also serves as a chair of the hospital’s Professional Governance council, which provides a platform for all nurses to voice professional practice changes, organizational involvement, community service, transformational leadership and bedside nursing empowerment.

“Nicole exemplifies what it means to be a nurse – deliver excellent care with the utmost compassion with a true commitment to our patients,” said Susan Massatt, interim chief nursing officer at Advocate Christ Medical Center. “It’s clear through her work and her involvement in Professional Governance that she cares about our patients, her colleagues and this hospital.”

Over 1200 nominations for this premier award were received on behalf of nurses from a variety of specialties across the patient care continuum. These frontline nurses represent diversity in their backgrounds and experiences, including honorees with decades of experience and others new to the profession yet already making an impact on their patients, colleagues and communities.

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

Advocate Health Care is part of Advocate Health, which employs more than 42,000 nurses across the nation, including 29 acute care facilities and more than 450 sites of care in the Midwest.