She came to Canada in 2016 to care for a stroke patient, not to nurse in a hospital. A decade later, she stood at the top of a national field.
Jennifer Sabalboro, an operating room nurse at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, has been named first-place winner of the 2026 Nursing Hero Awards, the 21st annual contest organised by Hospital News, one of Canada’s leading health care publications. The awards are timed around National Nursing Week.
Sabalboro arrived in Toronto as a live-in caregiver for a post-stroke elderly patient, having trained as a nurse in the Philippines. Like many internationally educated nurses, she had to step away from her profession on arrival and rebuild her qualifications from the ground up. Within a year, she earned her Registered Practical Nurse designation after navigating the National Nursing Assessment Service and the College of Nurses of Ontario.
During her job search, she ran into a familiar barrier for foreign-trained nurses: the demand for “Canadian experience.” Rather than accept it, she pushed back, telling employers that internationally educated nurses deserve a fair chance to prove their competence.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked two to three jobs at once while completing the requirements to become a Registered Nurse. She later completed a Community Health Nursing course at St. Francis Xavier University and finished the Perioperative Nursing Program with Honours at Centennial College through Sunnybrook’s Operating Room Education Sponsorship. She is now a certified Advanced Cardiac Life Support provider and a preceptor to new hires and nursing students across Ontario.
As an operating room nurse, Sabalboro prepares instruments, maintains aseptic technique, monitors patients, and advocates for patient safety throughout surgical procedures. Colleagues describe her as composed and solution-focused under pressure.
Her work extends well beyond the operating room. An active leader in the Integrated Filipino Canadian Nurses Association, she served as Director of Education and Training from 2022 to 2025 and now co-chairs the association’s Clinical Enhancement Program. Through one-on-one mentorship and educational sessions, she has guided internationally educated nurses through credential assessments, licensure requirements, exam preparation, and job readiness.
Her mentorship has reached nurses across Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as internationally to nurses from the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the United Kingdom. She has continued this work while on maternity leave as a new mother.
Sabalboro has previously been named IFCNA Internationally Educated Nurse of the Year in the Registered Nurse category, received commendations from the Office of the Associate Minister of Health, and was a finalist for the Golden Balangay Awards – Pinoy of the Year.
At Sunnybrook, she was joined in this year’s awards by colleagues from Team Sunnybrook. Iryna Fedoryak was named a top-five finalist, while Michelle Duong and Thai Nguyen received honourable mentions.
For Sabalboro, the recognition caps a journey she built one credential at a time, in a country that once asked her to start over.
