I'm currently a college freshman thinking about becoming a nursing major. I stumbled across this forum while doing a paper on the shortage of nurses and decided to check it out.
Anyways... I have mixed feeling about male nursing. It seems that nursing is very favored towards women, and I even hear there is discrimination towards male nurses in the workplace. Even in society males are not accepted as being nurses because it is "A woman's job." (Please don't take that the wrong way I'm just trying to illustrate a point.) When other people address nurses they are usually addressed as "she." I'm not sure if I would be comfortable with the whole nursing field yet. I don't appreciate it when people laugh or make fun of me when I tell them I'm thinking about becoming a nurse.
I'm posting this here because I figure there is no better place to get some input on what it is like being a male in a female dominated workplace. I read that even during nursing clinicals male nursing students are not given as much respect and direction as female nursing students are. I'm just very confused. There is one part of me that wants to become a nurse because I have a calling to help people in society, but there is also another that is holding me back because of the current situation with male nurses.
I do realize that the current situation with the gender barrier is because Florence Nightingale back in the 1800's defined that a nurse should be a woman of good character, who is not married, and white. Many of my professors praise her, but also disagree with her because nursing should be more open to all people. I also know that Florence Nightingale was not the first "nurse" and that there were nursing schools back in India, and other countries way before our time that were established by men, but people do not know that. Problem is society doesn't know that. I've read that the reason for this nursing shortage is because the nursing field lacks in diversity. Do you think that there will ever be a time that nursing will be accepted for both male and female? Is it worth the sacrafice of being looked down by other people?
