Male Nursing ?

PatMac10,RN, RN · Jul 12, 2010

I'm just a recentntly graduated HS student and am only a Health Occupations Student ( Hopefully I'll be PatMacCNA saturday after Itake my CNA exam) and people already look down and pick on me. I know that during my CNA clinicals and shadowing I didn't have a problem with "picking". I think most medical professionals are well educated and aren't as judgemental as those that are not in healthcare. It doesn't bother me any more because I know that nursing is what I want to be. I don't want to be a doctor (at least not now in my life and I don't see it in the future, but you never know). I want to be a nurse, I don't mind being in the background and working hard without all the prestige and glory that doctors may get.

It can be expected of those who are on the outside and don't understand why and what we feel when we want to be nurses. I go through it almost everytime I proudly tell someone I am a pre-nursing student and want to go into nursing.

I don't care about what people think of me in that regard. My dad and his side of the family look down on me for chosing to be a nurse and going to a community college (CC). I got accepted into Gardner Webb University's Pre-Nursing BSN program, but it was a private school and costed over $27,000 a year just for tution. Plus I have always wanted to start out with my ADN so I could go ahead and work and get into nursing.

If your zeal for nursing is strong i'm sure you'll be ok.

Sorry for the long post.

hockeynpolo · Aug 13, 2010

In nursing school, the women loved that I was a male nursing student. What could be better? I'm a guy, with a 1 to 10 ratio with girls. No guy picked on me because most of the time, I knew the girls they liked. So they'd come to me to ask me about so and so. Outside of nursing school, some (very few) people did automatically think that I was gay, but after talking to me and finding out that I wanted to be an ER/flight nurse, they quickly respected my choice to go into nursing (and they quickly figured out I wasn't gay). Plus, it's never wise to **** off a nurse because if you're ever in the hospital, it's the nurse that takes care of you, not the doctor. I'm not saying that the nurse would compromise your care, but it would just be very awkward. MDs respect males nurses bc we think like the male doctors do. And many of my patients have told me that the best nurses they've ever had were male nurses. So no, I haven't had huge problems. I push the drugs, I do the assessments, I report the critical lab values, and I recognize when my patient is circling the drain...that a hell of a lot more fun/interesting than working in a cubicle and pushing papers all day.