in need of advice

cursenurse · Jun 22, 2005

i am not a male, but i do hear that there is a great demand for male nurses. i think part of it is to increase diversity in what has long been thought of as a female dominated profession. i think that it is important to increase the number of men in the profession to help us to be able to shed the female dominated handmaiden image. i see alot of men in er, they seem to enjoy it.

texas_lvn · Jun 22, 2005

I had a graduating class of 25 from 77. We had over 11 males pass. Several want to do surgery and the others are going into LTC, more are headed to med/surg, and we had one head to corrections. Best of Luck!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jun 22, 2005

The demand is for nurses...period. I haven't heard of an area where males are in greater demand.

Basically, find an area you are interested in (as you go to clinicals you'll be able to find which areas you like) and go for it. Where I work, we are all over the place in the hospital. Used to be males congregated in critical care and the ER here, but the last few years I've noticed more and more in med-surg and cardiac areas.

Good luck in whatever you do.

ZASHAGALKA, RN · Jun 22, 2005

Male nurse here.

My advice, and it's not limited to males, are the specialty areas: ER, ICU, OR, L&D.

I've worked ER and ICU and love both but ICU is my thing. Couldn't do OR as I'm somewhat ADD and can't stand to be in one place for so long. And while I don't think L&D is off limits to males - many do and so might be a somewhat CLM (career limiting move).

Why the specialty areas? You can stand out more and as a result, there can be more respect there, better ratios means better interactions (worked medical/oncology the first 3 yrs, so I have some comparison), and the pay is better (my pay didn't start significantly improving till I moved to ICU).

Plus, shortage or no, management will inevitably rediscover someday that getting rid of nurses is better for the bottom line (NOT! but I don't normally associate the suits responsible for good business sense with actually having good business sense.) That being the case, specialty nurses are more difficult to find and so probably less likely to be replaced by the next great new unlicensed construct.

But, the trend these days is that grounding yourself in med/surg for a year isn't important like it used to be (it used to be a requirement). I think it still is a requirement. You learn lots there - time management, organization, and the basic skills and knowledge that you cannot learn anywhere else. Nursing school is the 'key' to the front door, but experience is still what actually makes you a nurse. I'm a believer in making that first year of experience 'well-rounded'.

If you migrate straight to a specialty area, you will find that your skills will become so focused to that area, that you will be unable to function in others. I'm an ICU nurse, but I can and have function(ed) anywhere in the hospital besides OR, L&D and PP.

I must confess that one of the reasons why I work ICU now is because med/surg is too danged hard. I have tons of respect for med/surg nurses - if I hadn't found ICU, I'd be another burnt out statistic - I don't know how med/surg nurses do it - I did it until I couldn't muster up the courage and compassion anymore, then I found somewhere that I could rediscover both.

~faith,

Timothy.

wannabFNP · Jun 23, 2005

Thanks for your quick reply's everyone. I'm almost positive that I will get accepted into the RN program this winter and I'm thinking about to start volunteering once a week or soon to figure out where I want to go. What would be the best nursing position for a male? Thanks again and stay in touch