[Thunderwolf]

Former resident states his case

By CLINT MORGAN


Being a guest on the Howard Stern Radio is likely to bring you some publicity.

Usually, though, it’s not the best kind.

Jerry Lucas found just the opposite was true during his recent visit to New York City.

Lucas was a guest on the shock-rock show taped March 13 to raise attention about his new publication, Male Nurse Magazine, and its coinciding Web site, www.malenursemagazine. com. Stern had Lucas on the show as one of a number of people who could choose to speak out about their cause or win an exotic date. Lucas chose to state his case, as he has done in many press forums over the past year.

A Seymour native, Lucas was once a registered nurse in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital, but is currently working at Floyd Memorial Hospital in New Albany. In May, Lucas started the project that would become Male Nurse Magazine. Starting with a “sub-standard” Web site, he said, the magazine site moved to better quarters via a new server in June and the first print version of the publicaiton is expected in the next two months.

“Male nurses are overlooked in all forms of popular press,” Lucas said. “College textbooks, professional nursing magazines, movies and television all give the same perception that men are doctors and women are nurses. As a result, many men don’t feel like they are part of the system of nursing.”

Lucas says that overlooking male nurses has more of an effect than just emotional strain.

“They are predicting we are going to be 250,000 nurses short this year due to an ongoing nursing shortage,” Lucas said. “With many college-educated men losing their jobs because of the economy, we are hoping to recruit some to nursing. A person with a college degree can enroll in an accerated nursing program and in two years have a job that pays $40,000 to $60,000 to start out.”

According to a CBS news report from September, for every female nurse that leaves the profession this year, there will be four males.

With the nursing shortage being called a crisis by some, Lucas says recruiting males into nursing and keeping them there can help solve part of the shortage, and the press, he says, is one way to do that.

“Other people that I have talked to say that we should change nursing from the inside through nursing associations in the state and places like the American Nursing Association,” Lucas said. “These are all women-controlled; by putting outside pressure with press from the magazine, I think it will have a more effective and faster effect.”

Though Lucas has not published a single print issue, he has already received 7,000 advance subscriptions. Apart from the Howard Stern Show, Lucas has received media coverage by The Orlando Sentinel, The New York Times and television and radio broadcasts around the country. He may be contacted by email through his Web site for information on the magazine.