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Appreciation means safety, respect and humanity

By Rick Lucas

I became a nurse because I saw what nursing could mean to a person and a family.

When my grandmother broke her hip, she stayed with us while she recovered. I watched the home health nurse help her get back on her feet. I saw the skill, patience and humanity it took. It was meaningful work that mattered. So right out of high school, I became a patient care assistant in the ICU while I went to nursing school. I’ve been in critical care ever since.

Today, I work as a rapid response nurse. That means I go wherever I’m needed in the hospital — when a patient may be developing sepsis, when someone shows signs of a stroke, when a blood pressure drops, or when anyone suddenly needs critical care. If someone collapses in the parking lot, my team responds. We also comb through medical records to flag patients at risk of complications and help move people through a complex system so they get the care they need before it’s too late.

That work takes training. It takes judgment. It takes teamwork. And it takes people at the bedside.

That is why I am so concerned about where healthcare is headed. Nurses are already working short-staffed. Rural hospitals and healthcare resources are being gutted to less than the bare minimum. Healing is both a science and an art — people need the right medical care, and they need someone to help them navigate big, scary moments.

Healthcare systems must provide enough nurses to deliver safe, competent and therapeutic care. They must ensure staffing levels that are safe for patients and sustainable for nurses. It is not a complicated equation. We need real investment in recruitment, retention, wages, safe working conditions, and the tools necessary to provide the care our patients deserve.

But that’s not what we’re getting.

Instead, we’re watching hospitals pour money into technology intended to surveil, deskill, and ultimately replace nursing care. Cameras enabled with artificial intelligence, tracking devices, and remote monitoring systems are being used to reduce the number of nurses providing patient care. Let’s be clear: These tools are often driven by efforts to reduce costs — not improve care.

There is a place for technology in healthcare. Nursing is already a highly technical field. Technology can improve documentation, communication and coordination. It can support our work. But it cannot replace it.

Patients who are sick, scared, recovering from surgery, or facing a devastating diagnosis need a highly skilled, compassionate nurse at the bedside — providing vigilant monitoring, clinical judgment and real-time intervention that saves lives. Our patients are not data points in an algorithm. They are people, and they deserve human care.

Nurses know what it means to show up. We showed up through the pandemic, sitting with patients who were isolated from their families — and I know that experience from both sides. I’ve been the nurse at the bedside, and I’ve also been the one saying goodbye to a loved one remotely.

We were handed used masks with lipstick stains and told to keep going. We didn’t have the supplies or the support we needed, but we had each other. And we endured risks and trauma we never should have had to take.

That is what I appreciate most about my colleagues. In a system that too often fails to support patients or the people who care for them, nurses show up every day and do extraordinary work. We bring skill, courage and humanity into moments when people are at their most vulnerable.

As a nurse and a union leader, I stay because I know we can fight for something better. We are not here to preserve a broken status quo. We are here to stand together and build a healthcare system that works — for patients, for nurses, and for every community that depends on us.

This Nurses Appreciation Week, appreciation cannot just be a thank you. It has to be action: safe staffing, real investment, respect for our profession, and a commitment to keeping human care at the center of healthcare. That is what nurses need. That is what patients deserve. And that is what we will keep fighting for.

Rick Lucas, RN, has been a critical care nurse for more than 20 years and a rapid response nurse at the Ohio State University Medical Center for more than 10 years. He is president of the Ohio Nurses Association.

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