Nurse transforms patient experience by bridging language barriers
Zachary Slusher pulls from float pool background, language skills, and pandemic experience to create philosophy of care rooted in empathy.
Zachary Slusher has not followed the typical path to— and through — nursing.
As a teenager, Slusher, BSN, RN, CEN, CCRN, knew he wanted to make an impact, but he didn’t want to commit to a college degree without fully understanding what he wanted to do.
After graduating high school early, Slusher spent a year in Chile, deepening his Spanish skills by immersing himself in the culture. When he returned to the U.S., he taught himself French and Portuguese.
He then pursued an associate degree at Kirkwood Community College and began working as a patient care technician at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Slusher quickly knew he had found his calling.
Eventually, as he moved through his licensed practical nurse (LPN) and then registered nurse (RN) credentials, Slusher worked wherever he was needed — from the emergency department to intensive care units to medical-surgical floors.
“This experience shaped how I view nursing,” says Slusher. “I never had a ‘home unit’ culture because I saw the entire hospital as my home unit. I gained an appreciation and empathy for the systemic process of health care.”
This mindset served him well during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he felt called to become a travel nurse to learn more about the entire health care system. Across the U.S., Slusher worked in hospitals large and small, from Level 1 trauma centers to small critical access hospitals. But it took its toll on him, and he stepped away from medicine in 2024.
While taking time to recover and reflect, Slusher realized that it wasn’t nursing that burned him out, it was the conditions surrounding it. He decided to return, so he could help make positive changes.
Not long after joining UI Health Care at the North Liberty campus in 2025, Slusher was serving as a charge nurse in the emergency department when a patient, who spoke little English, arrived with shoulder pain. Slusher immediately stepped in to help. He spoke directly with the patient by blending his fluent Spanish with self-taught Portuguese — creating enough understanding to make the patient feel comfortable. Slusher stayed with the patient from registration through discharge.
The patient nominated Slusher for a DAISY Award® writing, “He provided a video translator in Portuguese to help the other staff and the doctor. I appreciated that. However, it was his knowledge, awareness, and compassion for Latin America and my country that made me feel safe and comfortable.”
For Slusher, the award isn’t just about one interaction or one patient. It represents his larger philosophy that empathy is as essential as any clinical skill, and that the way health care workers treat one another and their patients shapes every outcome.
Now, he’s preparing to begin a dual PhD and Doctor of Nursing Practice program at the University of Iowa College of Nursing this fall — a program he worked with the nursing faculty to create. Slusher hopes to bridge gaps in the health care system and improve patient care and outcomes.
Relying on his own varied life experiences as a guide, Slusher shares his philosophy with future nurses while precepting: “Get as much diversity of experience as you can now to hone your nursing empathy for years to come.”
