I know for the most part there always seems to be a lot more focus on careers that are less likely to welcome women. But as a nursing major, i am part of a career that has not done a good job at recruiting men at all. However, it has gotten better, but i still think it's something worth mentioning to get a different side where men are not as welcomed into this career. I can admit that when I started nursing school I was a bit shocked to see men in my classes. Not because I didn’t think men could become nurses, I just didn’t think men would ever want to be nurses. For the most part, at TCNJ School Of Nursing, there is always about 2 or 3 men in each graduating class which I think shows that males working as nurses has become a bit more acceptable. However, there are still some stereotypes and prejudice ideas that come along with male nurses.
I have been in clinical rotations for 3 years now, and I have had a male in every clinical rotation so far. I have always felt that my male classmates always were questioned about their abilities as a nurse more so than my female classmates. Some patients did not want male nursing students at the bedside because they didnt think they were caring enough as oppose to a female. During one of my rotations on a labor and delivery floor, my male classmate was told (by the womans husband) that he could not observe his wife’s delivery, but a female nursing student could. I have seen nursing instructors give male students only male patients. And more commonly, I have seen male classmates get confused for Doctors.
Not only are the negative ideas in the workplace holding men back from going into the nursing field but the minimal portrayal of male nurses in the media are just as negative. In most cases, nurses in the media are females and doctors are males. Even the models wearing the skimpy nurses Halloween costumes are females. In the beginning of the semester we watched the movie Meet The Fockers, and we saw how the male lead character was constantly put down for being a nurse. In Greys Anatomy, all the males in the show are Doctors; the same goes for other medical shows such as ER, and House. Even in a show like Scrubs where there are some male nurses, they make fun of the female doctor for displaying an interest in the male nurse. In some cases, most male nurses are questioned about their sexuality and are often seen as gay or a little on the "softer side" for picking nursing as a career path.
of campaigns out there like the Johnson & Johnson Be A Nurse Campaign that is recruiting both men and women to become nurses. But i still think like we should start encouraging men to come into the field in nursing schools by maybe having more male professors teach nursing courses instead of just the fundamental sciences like anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, and microbiology that way these male students have other men who are already in a field to talk to for encouragement and help them deal with the stereotypes of male nurses.
2 comments:
I totally agree with you on this topic. Nursing is a well sought-after health care profession that has great pay and great demand. However, if media keeps affecting what men think of this profession, there will always be very few men becoming nurses. There are just too many stereotypes and room to be made fun of if you are a guy that wants to become a nurse. Meet the Fockers is the perfect example, because throughout the movie Greg constantly is being poked fun at for being a male nurse.
I think that to be a male nurse in this current time you have really love the job and be comfortable with your sexuality. You also have to be aware that you will be taking a lot of heat from patients like you already said with the pregnancy example. Hopefully in the near future media stops portraying "murses" in this negative light, so that we can start recruiting more males into this much demanded profession.
I agree as well! I have known some male nurses and I think everything you said it completely true. People do not expect a man to walk into the room when waiting for the nurse. It's engraved in our minds from when we are young. In Meet the Fockers, the card the baby had of the nurse was a woman. Robert Deniro comments that the card did not come in a male nurse version. Our society is so driven to defend the masculinity of a man, that they do not see the big picture. If a male nurse works hard and puts his time into his training, he is just as capable of doing the job as a woman is. Hopefully, the media of the future will stray from the current emphasis on masculinity and will focus more on the qualities any person can bring to an occupation such as nursing.
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