penn medicine nurse Samantha Roecker has been running since seventh grade, competing in high school and college, even qualifying for the Tokyo Olympic trials. But the Boston Marathon she just completed, her 12th marathon since she ran her first in 2014, is unlike any other.
For one thing, Roecker competed in a scrubs, aiming to set the world record for the fastest marathon in a nursing uniform. More important to Roecker, however, was why he entered this particular race: to raise funds to support the mental health and wellness of nurses. In association with the American Nurses Foundation, she collected more than $45,000 so far.
“I have a lot of close friends who are healthcare workers who have been through a lot during the pandemic,” says Roecker, who works as a clinical nurse in the otolaryngology practice at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine and is studying to be a nurse practitioner. (NP) in Pennsylvania‘s Nursing school.
One of Roecker’s close friends from high school, a physician assistant in New York City, began struggling with mental health after working for months in what became the epicenter of COVID-19 in the United States. “He just saw so much that he never expected to see in his life,” says Roecker. “I have been trying to help her, to support her. She wanted to think of something that could make her smile.”
Roecker started poking around and saw, to his surprise, that someone held the world record for running a marathon in uniform. She decided that trying to break that might be a good way to give her friend a boost. Roecker also knew that there were many more health care workers who also needed support. Wanting to do more, she started talking to everyone she could think of, even june trestonwho runs Penn Nursing’s Monitoring of the Family Nursing Program.
“She told me about her plans for the marathon in January,” says Treston, who, in addition to teaching Roecker, supervises her on her clinical rotation at Cooper University Hospital Emergency Department in Camden, New Jersey. “I love Sam’s story. She has so much compassion for her friend, enough to identify her needs and navigate the waters to get her help, understanding that there are so many barriers. She really turned things around to help all the struggling nurses across the country.”
By now, the burden that COVID-19 has placed on the health care community is well known. As an NP who worked in an emergency department, Treston saw it firsthand. “I was aware of all the development of the COVID pandemic. It’s been very difficult for health care providers,” she says. “Not knowing what’s going on, your family is worried, you’re seeing people die, they don’t have family there and we don’t have supplies. On so many different levels, it’s been traumatic.”
Because Roecker herself works in an outpatient clinic, she didn’t have the same up-close experience as Treston or her friend in New York. “Having said that, the pandemic has affected everyone in every job,” says Ella Roecker. “In health, specifically, so many times, we don’t have definitive answers. Patients get frustrated, rightly so, and then that frustration carries over to us. The entire health system has felt the pandemic in one way or another.”
During the pandemic, running became Roecker’s outlet again, as it had been for decades. The 2022 Boston Marathon, which marks the 50th anniversary of the first “official” women’s division for that race, gave Roecker specific goals.
She partnered with the American Nurses Foundation to raise funds for this cause, which had become personal and important to her. “Now more than ever, healthcare workers are the front-page news we’re seeing, but there’s not always support behind those words,” says Roecker. “The American Nurses Foundation has this great wellness initiative that checks so many boxes.”
Before the race, she ran 20-mile practices in uniform but, as she said, she saved the big test for the big day. In the end, she did what she had set out to do, run the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 48 minutes, and 11 seconds and beat the previous world record for about 20 minutes. “I definitely didn’t go into this marathon as the strongest or the fastest,” she says. “But this race only served a different purpose for me, to support and represent the nurses and other healthcare workers who have fought for the last two years.”
Samantha Roecker is a clinical nurse in the otolaryngology practice at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. She is also a student at Family Nursing Program in Pennsylvania‘s Nursing school.
June Treston is the director of the Monitoring of the Family Nursing Program in it Nursing school and nurse practitioner in the Emergency Department at Cooper University Hospital.
