Male nurses student and skipping OB/L&D clinicals

Tragically Hip · Jul 2, 2012

I'll never understand people wanting to reject knowledge, but that's just me. I think that's how we end up with short sighted nurses **in my opinion**.

The problem is that there are only so many hours in an RN program. Not everything can be covered in clinicals, so then, how do we decide what to sacrifice? Or to we require RNs to have BSNs, and trade some of the management and leadership classes for more practical experience?

Do nurses currently have sufficient training in such things as nutrition and the dying process?

HM-8404, BSN, RN · Jul 2, 2012

I don't understand. My institution spent a total of 2 months in OB, meaning 10% of the total education time. How much time do other institutions spend that dedicating "so much time" toward it? 2 months was hardly enough time to learn anything.
I'll never understand people wanting to reject knowledge, but that's just me. I think that's how we end up with short sighted nurses **in my opinion**.

The school I will be attending teaches OB during the Spring semester, 4 months. That will be 20% education time.

Does it really make sense to spend 20% of education time on something maybe 5% of nurses will do as a career? It is not rejecting knowledge it is preferring more emphasis be placed where the majority will be working. Why not make OB a specialty like critical care and such?

ERbuffnut98 · Jul 2, 2012

I am actually a pre male nurse student.
I am looking at a college in which I will attend if I decode to do nursing.
I have never experienced it so I want to shadow a nurse in the summer.
I want to make sure it is what I want to do. After I have made that decision I want to pursue it with all my heart at a young age. I am 19 years old and so if its what I want to do I don't want to wait until I'm 30 some.
Anyways I don't wish to do any OB or L&D stuff if I don't have to. I don't see what that has to do with ICU care (where I am wanting to go). Also I may have a different mind set that others. I don't want to do L&D because is a major invasion of a woman's privacy, imo.
If it were my wife (not married and faarrr from it) and there was no doctor, yes of course I would do it. But checking up on female patients every few hrs... Like- hey I just need to see you are doing down there...major privacy invasion. What female patient wouldn't feel uncomfortable? I think the only reason why most female patients don't mind a male OB is because they are in too much pain to notice. All I know is if I were a woman I would not want some guy staring up there. Same as me being a guy I don't really like female doctors or nurses checking me out down there...really weird and awkward.
All that said I want nothing (or at most little) to do with preforming procedures/assessments on women(I am talking where it exposes them..I don't need to see that). Is it likely that I can just do ped or something else at those clinical hrs?
I know most women would not want me there as well as some RN/instructors and myself. It is not something I would want to see and it would seem as if that would give me the title of "pervert".
Sorry this is so long. I know some of you may think I should do all that stuff, as maybe a good learning experience. I just don't see much to learn in it except assessment of a infant or a C-section.

to Farmboy: your not ready to be a Nurse. You have alot of growing up to do. you think you will never have to put a foley catheter in a female patient while working in a hospital. A part of being a nurse is helping people no matter what sex they are. were here to do a job and do it while being professional. grow up already..

veggie530 · Jul 3, 2012

The school I will be attending teaches OB during the Spring semester, 4 months. That will be 20% education time.
Does it really make sense to spend 20% of education time on something maybe 5% of nurses will do as a career? It is not rejecting knowledge it is preferring more emphasis be placed where the majority will be working. Why not make OB a specialty like critical care and such?

i wasn't referring to you rejecting knowledge, specifically, by the way

But I think you forget something else. How will you get nurses going to OB if you never let them get a taste of it? Even those interested in it before nursing need to experience it in SCHOOL before they revolve their life around it, in my opinion.

I know a lot of students go into school saying "I'm going to ICU! Critical Care! ER!" and that whole bit... but it isn't until you actually get some training and hit the floors that you really see what you like. I'm a guy and before my OB rotation I would NEVER have thought I'd consider an OB position. Now if the opportunity presented I would gladly work in OB -- and I would have never thought that without the OB rotation.

You're also assuming that those 4 months you could be spending elsewhere are going to somehow benefit you more than spending them on OB. So what if you spend another 4 months on med surge? In the grand scheme of things is that really going to make a huge impact on your skill set? Probably only as a new grad. If you completely skip OB, however... you know jack about it. Big difference *to me*.

MisfitSN, BSN, RN · Nov 4, 2012

Although you might not have an interest in pursuing OB as your specialty, like many posters have said, you will still deal with women of all ages and pregnant women in your rotations and in ICU settings as they are equally susceptible to injury and illness as men and boys. As a male student I thought that the pts would not want me to see them in a compromised position, but they were more than willing to allow me to provide care for them and their infants. First day of OB clinical I was invited to watch a birth. It was a wonderful experience that even some of my female peers did not get to have. Coming out of nursing school you will be a generalist. If you lack knowledge in an area then you pose a risk to your pts by not having any knowledge or experience. You can think of it like learning a language; how can you communicate well if you can only speak in the future tense? Such is your nursing education teaching you to communicate in any situation be it past, present, future, male, female, or child.

Aj01 · Nov 26, 2012

You're gonna have to get comfortable with it. Even if you dont want to do OB in practice you need to know the basics of it. I hated learning all the OB stuff last semester ( I graduate in may) but after actually having my OB rotation and actually assisting in delivering a couple babies it wasn't so bad. All the Kaplan tests i've taken since then have also had some questions relating to meds during pregnancy, positioning during an emergency all that jazz....Learn it and retain it.

seanynjboy, BSN · Nov 26, 2012

You're gonna have to get comfortable with it. Even if you dont want to do OB in practice you need to know the basics of it. I hated learning all the OB stuff last semester ( I graduate in may) but after actually having my OB rotation and actually assisting in delivering a couple babies it wasn't so bad. All the Kaplan tests i've taken since then have also had some questions relating to meds during pregnancy, positioning during an emergency all that jazz....Learn it and retain it.

All I can say is DITTO!!! I learned a lot in OB and was kicking and screaming all through it. Just take it and get it over with. I have a bunch of OB questions on my NCLEX-PN

Cllaws889, BSN · Nov 27, 2012

I don't think you understand the role of the nurse completely. To care for a person in their time of need requires you to put ALL personal thoughts, likes/dislikes, and bias aside to focus fully on keeping a persons "ticking" if you object to something as petty as a lady partsl assessment during l/d I hate to see how you act if someone were to go into labor spontaneously. You can't shun them off. You have to provide care. It's a legal obligation. If your afraid of awkward contact then you clearly can't begin to understand what sort of things you will be required to do. Wiping grandpas butt after a void, foley cath'ing grandma pre-op, awkward invasion of privacy is just part of the game. And it's not invasion of privacy as soon as the patient signs a waiver of consent to treat. Good luck I hope you realize this is such a small and normal thing to have anxiety over and it quickly passes for most.

Kooky Korky, BSN, RN · Dec 15, 2012

As a nurse, you will need to care for the whole patient, genitalia and all. Yes, it can be embarrassing sometimes, but your patients will need you to help them with any and every need they might have.

It is conceivable that your ICU patients might include pregnant women with severe high blood pressure or who have been in car accidents or suffered other trauma, post-partum women, or women and girls of any age. They all come with that "private area". They all need hygiene/bathing and toileting.

Some women in ICU might need care for a yeast infection of the lady parts. You might have to insert anti-yeast cream.

Or maybe a woman in ICU will have had a hysterectomy, oophorectomy, vulvectomy, vulvar or lady partsl cancer surgery, might be post-abortion with severe infection, or need ICU care for some other "woman" reason.

Obstetrics, gynecology, maternal-child, family nursing - these are all part of Nursing school. No decent school will let you skip them.

I hope you will buck up and get to the point where you aren't so embarrassed by or put off by female genitalia. Good luck to you.

Shorty11, BSN, RN · Dec 15, 2012

I am a female nursing student. I just completed my second semester of nursing classes (BSN program). I have to say that I personally would not feel "uncomfortable" for a male nurse (or any nurse) to be providing care to me that involved my perilady partsl or anorectal area. I would not think about it as "some guy staring up there". Whether he is a doctor, nurse, or another healthcare professional, he is a professional and he wouldn't be looking at my lady parts in a sexual way. Health care professionals are just that.. professionals. When providing care that involves a person's genitalia, assessing and providing the appropriate care are the focus. I would not find it "weird or awkward" if I was the patient and had a male nurse. But I might start to question what was going on if the nurse was acting uncomfortable.. whether the person was male or female. A professional who seems uncomfortable would in turn make me uncomfortable. I know not everyone feels this way... not every patient is comfortable being treated by someone of the opposite sex. But take comfort that there are people out there like me! When I am the patient I don't care if you are male or female, the important thing is that I am being treated by competent and professional nurses! I had a Foley catheter put in by a male nurse several years ago during a hospital stay. I am 27 now and I was 23 at the time. He was so confident that it seemed simply "routine"...I really didn't think much about it until I read your post. Work on your confidence a little! Best of luck on your journey!

Sadala, ADN, RN · Dec 15, 2012

Why would someone in ICU have a problem like that?
I could understand if a patient was admitted for something else (car accident maybe) and had that problem as well. I am just saying I doubt someone would be in ICU because of that. Would they be in the family doctor or gynecology or general hospital sector? Sorry I know very little about all this.
"so tough it out" yes if I do indeed go to like the RN's job I will have to do that. Once I know what I want and how I can achieve it that just may end up being a small bump in the road.
Also I try not to be unrealistic about it. I know what the job entails as my brother in-law is a ER or ICU nurse(he has worked almost everywhere in nursing). By stories he tells me I know a nurse gets left with the dirty work from time to time. For me it is more like "will I do good at it and will I be able to communicate easily and be a good critical thinker". I am daily improving my people skills but I don't know how I will do with the stress(never worked a real job). Also have a slight fear that if I ever mess up in giving the wrong meds I would loose my degree.

Have a cousin in CCU right now after hemorrhaging during childbirth. Not sure she's going to make it. actually. And then there's cathing, etc. People in CCU do need caths and cath care. They also need to be cleaned. Everywhere. All of these things are things you will do during clinicals. Believe it or not, at least for me, it is no more comfortable dealing with a woman's genitalia than it a man's (even though I'm female).

Conversely, the gender of the person examining me lady partslly is really not as much of a big deal as the fact that I just don't like being examined lady partslly. Not many people enjoy having their private parts perused, but it's necessary from time to time. There may be some women for whom this is an issue, but there are a lot of male PHYSICIANS in ob/gyn out there, you know? So it can't be that huge of a problem.

Sometimes, you have to do the things that make you uncomfortable in order to get what you want in the end.

p.s. CCU = critical care unit - didn't want to be confusing

InfirmiereJolie · Dec 16, 2012

Why didn't they do a C-Section?? Isn't the point of them is to stop dangerous childbirths??

Sorry, I was browsing and just saw the post here about your cousin, hope they get well. I'm not actually in nursing school YET, but this is something I think when I see these cases (wondering if I'm right on this, too).

I think it's VERY important to be able to be ready to deal with any situation, even if it seems awkward to the OP or not!