Itasca 'super nurse' earns top honor in her field
Dawn Gonzalez of Itasca is so passionate about nursing that she sometimes works seven days a week in the field. Consequently, when administrators with BrightStar Care in Schaumburg surprised her with the Midwest Region Nurse of the Year award, Gonzalez was shocked.
"I never knew there was an award like this," Gonzalez says. "We're so busy doing our work, we didn't think anyone noticed."
They did. Gail Fusz, director of nursing for BrightStar Care in Schaumburg, nominated Gonzalez for the award, describing her as a "super nurse."
"Dawn truly makes a difference in all her patients' lives, providing them with compassionate, exceptional care," Fusz says. "Dawn is a tremendous asset to the Brightstar Care Schaumburg team. She is reliable, hardworking, a true patient advocate, and she is clinically versatile in the care she provides."
Gonzalez balances her work at BrightStar Care with a full-time position as a nurse practitioner at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge and a clinical instructor one day a week at Chamberlain School of Nursing in Addison.
"It's my life to be a nurse and to help people," Gonzalez says. "I love it."
BrightStar Care is a national, private duty home care and medical staffing franchise, with more than 360 locations across the country that provide medical and nonmedical services to clients within their homes.
Gonzalez is based out of the Schaumburg office, but she visits patients throughout the Northwest suburbs. Her patients range from those needing intravenous infusions, to wound care and dressing changes, to administering shots to children at home, as well as COVID-19 vaccines.
"I also monitor their home care," Gonzalez says, "to determine if they're doing well at home or need to be admitted to the hospital."
Gonzalez has been working for BrightStar since 2008, and she also responds to calls from its Park Ridge and Kane County locations. She is a widow with three adult children, leaving her time to devote herself fully to her profession.
"I teach, work full time in a hospital and do home care," Gonzalez says. "Sometimes I wish I was more than one person, but I love it all."
If there was one thing she could change, she says, it would be to draw more nurses into the profession.
"I'm constantly trying to get more people to go into nursing," Gonzalez says. "There is so much need for nursing, and there's so much you can do in the profession."
As evidence of that commitment, when Gonzalez learned of her award and the $500 stipend, she called the next day to give it back to help other nurses and caregivers employed by BrightStar.
Franchise owners Tom and Barbara Koenig and Don Forlani wanted Gonzalez to keep her award, but instead they set up a $500 tuition scholarship to be awarded annually in her honor for their best caregivers and nurses.
Gonzalez was one four nurses from the Midwest locations of BrightStar to win the award. She now is in contention for the National Nurse of the Year, to be named in the fall.