‘First of a kind’: Nurse earns award at Advocate Sherman in Elgin

Registered nurse Brittany Holliday recently exited the elevator at Elgin’s Advocate Sherman Hospital. In the vestibule, a crowd, including some family members, lined up and waved flags while triumphant music played.

“I’m like, ‘What is going on?’” Holliday wondered.

Holliday, a caregiver with the adult medical patient care unit at Sherman since 2017, had been selected as the hospital’s 2024 Nurse of the Year.

Surprised, humbled, and honored, Holliday’s brief acceptance speech was ironic, given the improved communication she fostered among nurses, a key reason she won the award.

Serving as Advocate Sherman’s first nursing staff president from 2022 to 2024, the Sycamore woman created streamlined workflows and simplified the nursing staff’s access to information.

In that role, Holliday was instrumental in creating documents that provided information to nurses at the hospital.

By consolidating “hundreds of emails” sent throughout the week into a single weekly bulletin, she helped free up more of the nurses' time for delivering the hospital's mission.

“It increases the quality of care. If we can design a workflow that’s more efficient for the nurses, it increases the time for the nurses to be at the bedside,” Holliday said.

“It helps the nurses be aligned with new practice changes so everyone in the hospital is receiving that same new knowledge,” she said.

Holliday, whose mother had worked in health care, graduated from Northern Illinois University’s nursing program in 2010.

She started in nursing organizational platforms at Sherman as a member of its Practice Council and then its chair in 2018.

Based on her work as nurse staff president, Holliday won the hospital’s Nursing Excellence Award for Transformational Leadership in 2024.

“It was clear that she was a great leader,” said Susan Morby, chief nursing officer of Advocate Sherman Hospital.

“Her role essentially is to make sure that we hear the voice of nurses in every care area who are providing direct patient care,” Morby said.

“Nurses touch almost every single patient in a hospital,” Morby said. “So as the chief nurse, I want to hear from them because they know what is going on with patients, what is not going well, what we need to change so that we can provide the best of care.”

Another Brittany — Brittany Smith — was elected as Holliday’s successor as nurse staff president for 2025-26.

“Brittany Holliday really kind of paved the way because she was the first of a kind,” Morby said.

Morby said she hopes Holliday will someday pursue a higher leadership role with Advocate Health.

For now, Holliday says she will continue to work in professional governance and spend more time with her young children “before I continue on my journey.”

“I just want to continue to do good for our community,” Holliday said. “The work that I’m doing, hopefully, will move us toward better patient outcomes and quality care.”