Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

Originally Posted by ern91

I'm interested in knowing if anyone has the issue of male nurses refusing to perform certain nursing functions simply because they are male. Having worked in a large teaching hospital and smaller community hospitals, there seems to be a huge difference. In the teaching hospital, male nurses did everything a patient needed, regardless of gender. In the smaller community hospitals, the male nurses sought out female nurses to take care of all manner of female patient's hygiene, all gyn exams ,and anything else a female patient needed. Have we become such a litigous society that we base our practice on gender? Do you find yourself taking care of your male colleagues patients as well as your own simply because they are afraid to touch their female patients?

Nurses working in small community hospitals usually find life much more enjoyable when they conform to the community standards regarding same sex care for their patients. Disregarding patients' preferences can be disastrous to a hospital's income statement because patients will often select the hospital they want based on their opinions of "nursing care."

Please don't make any blanket assumptions about patients' preferences based on their ages, because these attitudes often tend to be a family trait that is reinforced daily by community and/or religious teachings. If the idea of a patient wishing to maintain a sense of modesty offends you, perhaps you should find a different workplace.

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

I pesonnally ask for a female to do my female patients caths. Im very comfortable doing them however i dont want to give anyone the opportunity to make a bogus claim against me. If im going to do a female cath there will be a female witness.

Heck where I work 98% or the patients have a different skin color than i do. Ems can be rolling a GSW in the door and I have the patient yelling at me when Im trying to help them. Its absoultley amazing, Let me see your shot and you dont want me to help you because of my skin color.

I would assist and have with pelvics when no female RN is present. This has been very rare but there are more and more nights where all the E.R. RN's are men.

My personnal opinion if your a man have a witness so that noone can make false accusations against you.


And for those of you that think i might be dumping on the female R.N.s, i will take all the jail patients for them, I will be standing in front of them for the daily abusive and assaultive patients. (get hit all the time) And I will take the critical patients so that they dont have to.

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

After reading some of your posts I have a question, and comment.

Why is it that a woman can do the procedures on a male, and not have a witness but a male cannot do the procedures on a female without having a witness?

Isn't that racist of a kind?

Wouldn't it make sense that if a male needs witness to do his duties on a female, that a female needs a witness to do her duties on a male?

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

Originally Posted by WannabeOrthoSurgeon

After reading some of your posts I have a question, and comment.

Why is it that a woman can do the procedures on a male, and not have a witness but a male cannot do the procedures on a female without having a witness?

Isn't that racist of a kind?

Wouldn't it make sense that if a male needs witness to do his duties on a female, that a female needs a witness to do her duties on a male?

I mentioned in an earlier post that small communities may have values that are not the same as those found in large cities. A female nurse, married or single, living and/or working in one of those communities does herself no favor by acquiring a reputation for being too eager to participate in intimate care for male patients. A witness is just as important for her as it would be for a male nurse caring for a female patient.

You can talk all you want to about nursing being gender neutral, but there's no excuse for denial of community standards of decency, whether you agree with them or not.

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

Originally Posted by Retired R.N.

I mentioned in an earlier post that small communities may have values that are not the same as those found in large cities. A female nurse, married or single, living and/or working in one of those communities does herself no favor by acquiring a reputation for being too eager to participate in intimate care for male patients. A witness is just as important for her as it would be for a male nurse caring for a female patient.

You can talk all you want to about nursing being gender neutral, but there's no excuse for denial of community standards of decency, whether you agree with them or not.

I see. I guess it's just the "known" thing that a female nurse is the standard. As in most average males probably wouldn't care rather they have a male, or female as a nurse, just that they do a good job. While I see some women would probably not go to a hospital just for the fact that they have male nurses, whether they are good at the job, or not. I never ment it negative, just discussing(sp?) both sides. I personally wouldn't care if it was male, or female just that they are easy with me, and do a good job

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

In response to the question: I am a male nurse who does not try to get out of procedures dealing with female clients. I first and foremost ask the client if they object to me doing the procedure, most of the time they do not but some do and at that point I ask a female nurse to take over. I also will ask a female nurse to assist if I am doing procedures dealing with the female genitalia simply because I am protecting myself from posible legal issues that may arise later.

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

I'm a female student, (not a nurse yet) but I can tell you from experience with my two teenage sons and my husband, (who needs to get cathed every once in a while due to kidney stones); all three of them want a female nurse, not a male nurse! This seems to be the opposite of what everyone is saying, but from their point of view, it has something to do with homophobia. My husband was very uncomfortable having a male nurse do his foley, even though there is nothing sexual about it. There is always that question in their minds... Is this guy a homosexual? If he is, I don't want him touching me!

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

Originally Posted by 911fltrn

I pesonnally ask for a female to do my female patients caths. Im very comfortable doing them however i dont want to give anyone the opportunity to make a bogus claim against me. If im going to do a female cath there will be a female witness.

Heck where I work 98% or the patients have a different skin color than i do. Ems can be rolling a GSW in the door and I have the patient yelling at me when Im trying to help them. Its absoultley amazing, Let me see your shot and you dont want me to help you because of my skin color.

I would assist and have with pelvics when no female RN is present. This has been very rare but there are more and more nights where all the E.R. RN's are men.

My personnal opinion if your a man have a witness so that noone can make false accusations against you.


And for those of you that think i might be dumping on the female R.N.s, i will take all the jail patients for them, I will be standing in front of them for the daily abusive and assaultive patients. (get hit all the time) And I will take the critical patients so that they dont have to.

I like your post. I work in the ER with some nurses that sound just like you. They will gladly step up and take my abusive/assaultive/inapropriate/shackled prisoner pt's in return for my cath on a young woman.

and, honestly, if I need a fem cath done...I would rather have a female nurse... I NEVER mind doing a cath or assisting with a pelvic. The male nurses I work with will never refuse to cath a pt-they just gauge the circumstances and act with whatever is in the pt's best interest. Generally these guys are looking out for me and I in turn look out for them.

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

Originally Posted by Retired R.N.

Disregarding patients' preferences can be disastrous to a hospital's income statement because patients will often select the hospital they want based on their opinions of "nursing care."

I'm sure that is the case in many places but at least one well known and well respected hospital backs all male nurses by telling PTs they will help them check into another hospital if they have a problem with male nurses.

Re: Male Nurses/female Patients

Last week I witnessed something chilling.

A male CNA and I wereassisting a confused patient back to bed.
One minute she was all smiles and cooperation, an instant later she turned to him and said," if you don't let go of me I'm going to tell everyone that you raped me." At that point I told him to leave the room and not come back in. I also documented every single word in her chart, notified the supervisor and left a message for our manager.

Ok, she was confused, but I don't think that her family would have taken that into consideration if she told them that she had been raped. At the very least there would have been an investigation, and that CNA would have been put on suspension pending the outcome.

I have been a nurse for 13 years and have never witnessed something like that before, but I can tell you now, if I were a male, I would make sure that I had a witness before doing a cath., pericare or any other procedure of that nature on a female patient. The consequences of an accusation, even a false one, are frightnening.