Discrimination against males in the nursing profession.

Nurses Men

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Stereotyping male nurses have reached a disreputable level in my society and beyond, to the point that it started to affect the mindset and the efficacy of male nurses. An eye opener should be addressed on this topic in order to tackle and seal this "infringement". The use of both qualitative and quantitative data is necessary to acquire a stone based stand - interviews, surveys, content analysis, participant observation, secondary data analysis, case studies, meta-analysis, statistics and others. In addition, I hope the outcome of this topic would be to reach definitive answers and solutions rather than fashioning and escalating a new controversial topic.

I wrote this topic for an English research paper and I would like to hear from male and female nurses about this topic - any stories, quotes, personal point of views and real life situations would be helpful.

Thanks in return

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

I work with a few male nurses and I have never seen any type of discrimination or stereotyping. They are generally respected and treated the same as any other nurse on the floor.

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Specializes in Medical Surgical.

I don't know what "Society" you live in, but this is not true in mine.

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Specializes in Medical Surgical/Addiction/Mental Health.

I have never been discriminated against. I can count on one hand the number of times a patient has requested a female nurse. It was related to religious reasons which I completely understood.

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Specializes in Med Surg - Renal.
Stereotyping male nurses have reached a disreputable level in my society and beyond, to the point that it started to affect the mindset and the efficacy of male nurses. An eye opener should be addressed on this topic in order to tackle and seal this “infringement”. The use of both qualitative and quantitative data is necessary to acquire a stone based stand - interviews, surveys, content analysis, participant observation, secondary data analysis, case studies, meta-analysis, statistics and others. In addition, I hope the outcome of this topic would be to reach definitive answers and solutions rather than fashioning and escalating a new controversial topic.

I wrote this topic for an English research paper and I would like to hear from male and female nurses about this topic - any stories, quotes, personal point of views and real life situations would be helpful.

Thanks in return

I have neither witnessed nor experienced any "infringement", stereotyping, or discrimination of male nurses of any kind. Ever.

Hope this helps.

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In my SOCIETY we are greatly valued and appreciated.

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Cool thanks for your comments. Well to tell you the truth I am a male nursing student in the middle east - Lebanon so we still got that mentality that this job is a "female job". So I am trying to change that mentality.

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Specializes in Family practice, emergency.

We had a couple of male students in my program and I think that there is more a stereotype across culture. For example, I know of an Indian male that had to face his family's disappointment that he wasn't going the MD route... on top of that he was the best L & D nurse one could want... he went to NICU because no one would hire a male on L & D. It is no longer a "female" profession, and I wish you the best of luck in changing attitudes!

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Specializes in Med Surg - Renal.
Cool thanks for your comments. Well to tell you the truth I am a male nursing student in the middle east - Lebanon so we still got that mentality that this job is a "female job". So I am trying to change that mentality.

Ah. Bummer.

Good luck.

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I haven't found any discouragement from people in the working world, but I did have one professor in nursing school who had a not so secret dislike for males in the profession.

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Specializes in ICU/CCU/CVICU.

I just hate it when I tell people outside of healthcare about my job/ day and get rude comments about my coworkers. I work with a lot of male nurses and if it comes up in conversation I always seem to get asked if they are gay (which none of them are as far as I know). I think people outside of healthcare can have more stereotypes about male nurses than people that work in healthcare and know what the job is like.

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I am a male nurse. I started my new graduate year in a NICU and I was the only male out of 40+ staff members. I can now safely admit that I was a victim of gender discrimination. From day one I was never fully accepted. I was told comments like "you won't last here long" and when I enquired about the previous male nurses I was told that "they were crap" and they lazy. When a new educator started in the NICU people were reporting me about hand washing, omitting small things (e.g pentavite because a baby was vomiting) and I was alleged to using a baby as a hand weight for malicious reasons. I had to be assessed. Fortunately I passed but I was told to leave I never to this day found out who reported me. I was one of 5 new grads but I was the ONLY one told to leave the NICU and to this day the memories still haunt me. I have decided to undergo another degree. So now you know that gender discrimination for male nurses exists.

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