How are male nursing students perceived?

[erikmm291]

To start off, I am currently a male nursing student who has just started his first semester of school in January and is completely scared for his first day of clinicals this fall. Now I am sure that my fellow classmates are just as nervous, but the fact being that I am a male makes me more nervous. I live in a very conservative and religious area and the thought of a patient or coworker possibly viewing me as a lesser counterpart when compared to my female classmates seems likely. Personally, I knew that when I choose to enter into nursing school that male nurses still may carry a negative connotation in my area and I chose to ignore the negatively, but how as a former student did you cope with the stereotypes and negative images depicted of male nurses? Were your first few patients in clinicals fully welcoming to having a male nursing student or did you encounter some patients who did not prefer a male nursing student? If so, how did you handle the situation? And what advice would you give to me to prepare for those situations?

[BostonFNP, APRN]

Life is pretty easy as a male in nursing.

[mintygirl]

Not a male nurse, but honestly I'm glad more males are showing up in the nursing field. I don't want nursing to be viewed solely as "woman's work" but simply work. With that said its great to have males on the floors, especially as a CNA. Plus a lot of my male pt's prefer the male nurses to the females because of private care, etc. The list goes on!

[DominicanNurse1123]

When I had my daughter I had a male student nurse and I was very young (18) , Im 31 now ..and it did make me feel uncomftorable Initially , however he seemed really nervous and like he was trying REALLY hard , and after a few minutes of interacting with him , I did not feel AS uncomftorable . I think the older nurses seem to have the main biases with male nurses . Because I am always excited to see male nurses now going into the field . I have been an LPN for 5 years now and I'm returning to school in a few weeks to begin the LPN to ADN bridge program where I live . I was recently very upset by a comment a co-worker made about not wanting a male on one of our homecare cases because " she's such a tiny little girl ..." This male nurses happens to be a stellar nurse with many years of experience . I say keep your head up and don't let the ignorance of others get you down . Be proud of what you have accomplished and will continue to accomplish .

[DominicanNurse1123]

18 years old .. Not sure why it put a smiley face ... Lol

[justashooter]

Having said that, the only clinical rotation that I have run into any issue is also OB, but for some reason the instructors are seemingly more paranoid than the patients.

OB is a special place, and the floor nurses can be very territorial there. in my case, the floors were lifers on gravy duty and didn't want ANY students on the floor to rock their pleasure boat. the CNA on OB were just as bad as the RN. some spurious complaints were made by the same floor nurse about 3 people in our 8 student clinical group that were patently false, but could not be countered. as a result the instructor was paranoid.

that being said, backstabbing and false accusations by floor nurses on other units did occur on occasion. i chalk it up to unhappy floor nurses and borderline personality issues.

[Fireman767]

I don't know where you did your rotation but i never had that issue. My OB rotation went fine, I even had nurses offer to show me a procedure or such. Even pediatrics, the nurses were so kind and helped me out (as a male nursing student). Some patients were even glad to have male nurses, especially some fathers who would make jokes or just spend some time talking to someone who wasnt a woman. Maybe that hospital and program have a negative thought of male nurses, but not all programs are like that.

[Tait, MSN, RN]

I am in my third semester of nursing classes and will be starting mother/baby in a week. So far I have had nothing but positive responses from my patients and my gender has not been an issue. The biggest problem that my fellow male students and I have had is that some people make the very wrong assumption that we are doctors and not nursing students. I even had the head nurse in the OR introduce me as a med-student! A subtle or not-so-subtle correction works well.

Walk into the patient's room with confidence, even if you are like every other nursing student and have none in your first clinicals. Perception is everything! You'll do great.

Yes yes yes!

[FuturePsychNP]

I went through nursing school as a career changer and had fortunately reached that time in development where you may truly say, "I don't care what anybody else thinks." And I don't. I wear boots and a belt with scrubs and open meds with a pocket knife. People make fun of it all the time. Couldn't care less.