Nursing Society Ousts CEO Accused of Using Racial Slur

The CEO of an international nursing honors society was removed from his position after he allegedly made racial slurs and sexual references to slavery.

Lucas Davis, the former CEO of Sigma Nursing honor society, was terminated by the group’s board of directors late last week.

“The language and behavior reflected in the communications that became public are inconsistent with Sigma’s values of love, courage, and honor and with the expectations we have for those entrusted to lead the organization,” Sigma Nursing said in a statement shared with MedPage Today.

Davis’ comments were initially shared in a video by Terace Garnier, including text messages with racial slurs, and allegations that he used sexualized slavery language.

Sigma said it is “not in a position to confirm or verify the authenticity of the personal messages that have been circulating online.”

Nonetheless, it said the board “firmly believes that its action was appropriate and was taken in the best interests of the organization.”

“The Board reviewed the information available, consulted independent legal counsel, and fulfilled its governance responsibilities before taking final action,” the statement said.

Not long after the video first surfaced on Monday, Sept. 14, Davis was placed on leave. By the end of the week, the board had voted to remove him.

Davis was appointed CEO of Sigma Nursing in August 2024. The organization was originally founded in 1922 as the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. It has more than 1 million members and 600 chapters globally, and its mission is “developing nurse leaders anywhere to improve healthcare everywhere.”

The comments have roiled the nursing world. Sunni Johnson-Strodes, DNP, RN, said in an Instagram post that Davis led an organization “with an incredibly diverse population.”

“If this is true … I personally have a hard time with how he perceives and interacts with that same culture of people in his professional life,” she said. “This whole thing is wild to me.”

In a post on LinkedIn, Brenice Duroseau, PhD, MSN, FNP-C, called for more transparency, noting that terminating one person “is not the same as accountability and it cannot substitute for an honest examination of the system, culture, and conditions that allowed racism to proliferate in the first place.”

And in an op-ed for Nurse.org, Krista Walker, PhD, founder of a patient-centered artificial intelligence company, said the controversy signals a bigger question about whether the nursing profession treats Black nurses as equal partners. She cited surveys that show the vast majority of Black nurses experience workplace racism.

“Nursing can preserve its self-conception as a caring profession occasionally disrupted by individual racism, or it can acknowledge that racism helped organize the profession itself,” Walker wrote. “The first path offers reputational comfort. The second offers transformation.”