Are you encouraging other XYs to pursue nursing?

[Zyrv]

There's a shortage of XY nurses and it would be good to see more male nurses pursue nursing. That can only happen when people start encouraging our XY counterparts, if they are fit to become health/medical professionals. Encourage the male members of your family, relatives, friends, colleagues etc.

I also don't see why nursing education providers aren't giving male applicants a priority in enrolments. It's only fair. I see too many female nurses and nursing students that aren't fit to be nurses in the first place. It's embarrassing that health science faculties are giving green light to unfit "nurses".

[PMFB-RN, RN]

Perhaps USA is experiencing an oversupply of nurses but some countries have shortages and even importing nurses from overseas to meet the demand.

Ya? Which ones?

[middleager]

I find the comments challenging the OP why would there be a need to encourage males due to diversity or balance interesting. I remember distinctly when I was in college the effort to bring females into med schools to be MD's for exactly those same reasons. Affirmative action is based on increasing diversity. Obama is pushing for more females in the tech industries due to lack of diversity. There is no more important, personal, or intimate industry than healthcare and especially nursing. If diversity was important for MD's why would it not be the same for nursing? A patient is certainly more likely to be affected positively or negatively by diversity or lack there of than a line of code or hard drive and yet no one seems to consider the push to diversify the tech industry silly. I think the issue may be partially the fact that we are not used to thinking diversity is important when males whom are normally the majority are the minority.

[elkpark]

I find the comments challenging the OP why would there be a need to encourage males due to diversity or balance interesting. I remember distinctly when I was in college the effort to bring females into med schools to be MD's for exactly those same reasons. Affirmative action is based on increasing diversity. Obama is pushing for more females in the tech industries due to lack of diversity. There is no more important, personal, or intimate industry than healthcare and especially nursing. If diversity was important for MD's why would it not be the same for nursing? A patient is certainly more likely to be affected positively or negatively by diversity or lack there of than a line of code or hard drive and yet no one seems to consider the push to diversify the tech industry silly. I think the issue may be partially the fact that we are not used to thinking diversity is important when males whom are normally the majority are the minority.

To me, the difference is not males as majority vs. minority, it's that a concerted effort was made to keep qualified females who wanted to become physicians out of medical school for generations and schools were extremely reluctant to change that (in many cases, had to be forced to change). My father was an RN in the 1930s. I had male students as classmates in the early '80s, when I was in nursing school, and had male nursing instructors in my school and encountered plenty of male RNs in various clinical settings at that time. The point of affirmative action programs is to "level the playing field" for groups that have been arbitrarily prevented from entering particular fields/occupations. In my experience, nursing has bent over backwards to recruit and encourage males to enter nursing for at least several decades now. I'm not aware of any institutional barriers keeping males out of nursing; they have the same opportunities to get accepted to nursing schools and succeed in nursing practice as any female; the only reason there are not more males in nursing is that more males have not chosen to enter nursing.

[Fruit Sucker]

Yes, that is the difference- nobody is hindering men from entering the field of nursing. In large part, the reason more men aren't interested is because it's seen as "women's work" and is therefore less respectable. This is why you're not going to find a lot of women who are sympathetic to the idea of convincing more men that it's okay for them to be nurses after all. If they think it's beneath them, let them do something else.

I also think the OP is getting a lot of pushback due to his implication that women tend to have more personality problems. He's tried to imply it in so many ways without actually coming out and saying it that it's kind of laughable.

[middleager]

Well actually the history in men in nursing goes back to the Civil War when men were not allowed to be nurses as they needed soldiers to fight, and by the early 1900's most nursing schools allowed only females to enter. The Army & Navy Nursing Corps banned males from being nurses until after the Korean War though they could serve as medics since that role was on the battlefield. Prior there were many male nurse partly due to religious and "moral" norms of the early years. The current 9% male is every bit as much a result of discrimination and being blocked/discouraged from entering the profession earlier as females in MD's so affirmative action as in your example would apply. Then there is the issue with Silicon Valley, engineering has been open to women for many many years but few chose to enter so and yet Obama uses it as an example of a problem over and over, So again, why is it OK to push for diversity when females are the minority but it is the males fault when they are the minority. The barriers of overcoming stereotyping works both ways, the mentality that women aren't cops because it doesn't fit is just as wrong as men aren't nurses because they look down on the job. There are not many female cops for the same reason there are not many male nurses, society has said it shouldn't be for so long it takes time to break down the barriers real or imagined by the stereotype. The issues of lack of diversity in male dominated fields and nursing toward men are more alike than different. That said I agree, the comment (paraphrasing) that someone knew many women who weren't qualified to be good nurses was first off a broad generalization that flys in the face of what others including myself have found to be the case and would apply just as broadly to male so I understand and agree with that push back.

[RescueNinjaKy]

Well actually the history in men in nursing goes back to the Civil War when men were not allowed to be nurses as they needed soldiers to fight, and by the early 1900's most nursing schools allowed only females to enter. The Army & Navy Nursing Corps banned males from being nurses until after the Korean War though they could serve as medics since that role was on the battlefield. Prior there were many male nurse partly due to religious and "moral" norms of the early years. The current 9% male is every bit as much a result of discrimination and being blocked/discouraged from entering the profession earlier as females in MD's so affirmative action as in your example would apply. Then there is the issue with Silicon Valley, engineering has been open to women for many many years but few chose to enter so and yet Obama uses it as an example of a problem over and over, So again, why is it OK to push for diversity when females are the minority but it is the males fault when they are the minority. The barriers of overcoming stereotyping works both ways, the mentality that women aren't cops because it doesn't fit is just as wrong as men aren't nurses because they look down on the job. There are not many female cops for the same reason there are not many male nurses, society has said it shouldn't be for so long it takes time to break down the barriers real or imagined by the stereotype. The issues of lack of diversity in male dominated fields and nursing toward men are more alike than different. That said I agree, the comment (paraphrasing) that someone knew many women who weren't qualified to be good nurses was first off a broad generalization that flys in the face of what others including myself have found to be the case and would apply just as broadly to male so I understand and agree with that push back.

That generalized statement by the op is what got me. To automatically say such a thing about females while the same could just as much be said about males just strikes me as misogynist.

There is no issue with encouraging men to be nurses, but should priority be given just because they're male? No. Credentials/academic standing should still be the final decider. That lies most people's issue with the op, that he is saying that preferential treatment be given those who have a member.

[middleager]

Understood, I found the statement to be pointless as well. The profession is constantly at the top of the most trusted, 90% of nurses are female...it makes one think the obvious conclusion is someone is doing something right most of the time. But sometimes we embellish to make a point. To level the field we tear the other down rather than building our side up. Given the opinion society has in where they place their trust...evidently not to many bad female nurses out there. And I agree 100%, I think it is fine to encourage either gender to go into specific fields to encourage diversity, but that should not precedence over qualifications, be that programing a computer or med-surg qualifications first then lets talk. I taught a Junior Achievement class several years on the value of getting an education and the opportunity it provided. I would always open with asking for a show of hands how many would consider various occupations, these were 8th-9th graders. One thing was very consistent, the boys rarely ever held up their hands to be a nurse...they would look around to see what the other guys were doing and then sit quietly while many of the girls would raise their hands. But when I asked, who would be interested in working as a legislator at the federal level, it was almost the opposite though not quite as defined. It got me interested and I have started working on a couple of endeavors, how could I get more boys interested in nursing and more girls in politics in my community. Change is slow but diversity, qualified diversity is usually good for all involved.

[Fruit Sucker]

I would always open with asking for a show of hands how many would consider various occupations, these were 8th-9th graders. One thing was very consistent, the boys rarely ever held up their hands to be a nurse...they would look around to see what the other guys were doing and then sit quietly while many of the girls would raise their hands. But when I asked, who would be interested in working as a legislator at the federal level, it was almost the opposite though not quite as defined. It got me interested and I have started working on a couple of endeavors, how could I get more boys interested in nursing and more girls in politics in my community. Change is slow but diversity, qualified diversity is usually good for all involved.

You raise some very good points about stereotyping...this is along the same lines of the stereotype that men aren't supposed to be emotional or cry or be sensitive, which in my opinion is very damaging.

[elkpark]

The current 9% male is every bit as much a result of discrimination and being blocked/discouraged from entering the profession earlier as females in MD's so affirmative action as in your example would apply.

Well, putting aside the Civil War, WWs I and II, and the Korean War for the moment, please explain to me what barriers there have been to men entering nursing for the last, oh, I don't know, 20 or 30 years. Thirty years ago, my nursing school was doing its best to recruit and admit male students, and there were plenty of male nurses in the hospitals in which we did our clinicals. Admittedly, not a large proportion of males, but there were no barriers or formal, institutional discrimination being shown. In fact, I would argue just the opposite. Every nursing school I've been affiliated with over the years, as a student or as an instructor, has gone out of its way to recruit and admit male students. The (many) male nurses I've worked with over the years have not perceived themselves as having experienced any institutional gender discrimination in school or employment (oh, sure, there's always been the occ. nursing instructor who just doesn't like the idea of men in nursing, but they must have mostly died out by now ...). Women now make up >50% of the students in medical and law schools in the US. Males are nowhere near that as a percentage in nursing schools -- I would argue that that is because men are choosing not to enter nursing, not that anything is preventing them from doing so. And I will freely admit that, while I welcome men into nursing and always have, I do not agree with the individuals (like the OP) who post here that nursing "needs" more men to fix all the problem they consider inherent in a female-dominated occupation (that would somehow automatically be resolved by the presence of more males), and I do not lie awake nights worrying about why there aren't more men coming into nursing and how we can "fix" that.

[middleager]

Well Elkpark they are the same barriers that prevent females from being represented in any number in Silicon Valley, on Police forces, etc. Barriers do not have to be physical, they do not have to be prohibitive, they can be societal. Long after the civil rights movement or women's rights were established by law, societal barriers kept them from achieving equal status. There was a song a while back that had the line "there was a law passed back in 64 to give folks a little more, but it only goes so far when all people see is the box on the hiring line"....social norms, expectations, stereotypes can be just as restrictive as a law. Women can drive stock cares, blacks can't be quarterbacks, men can't be nurses...can you honestly say that the sterotype male nurses are gay was not a barrier to get past for some guys? And my main point, they have been trying to entice women into traditionally male occupations such as silicon valley, no real barriers stop them, but societal norms do. If we recognize the need to help diversify computer programing, even though in theory nothing stops women from working there...why is it wrong or not applicable to nursing...when half of your patients are male?

[elkpark]

social norms, expectations, stereotypes can be just as restrictive as a law. Women can drive stock cares, blacks can't be quarterbacks, men can't be nurses...can you honestly say that the sterotype male nurses are gay was not a barrier to get past for some guys?

Really? You're proposing that discrimination and stigma against gays is a reason why men might choose not to go into nursing? Too bad they're so insecure about their sexuality that they'd base career decisions on whether or not someone might suspect they're gay. Well, I guess my main point is that the larger nursing community has been working hard to recruit males, as least as hard as anyone has been trying to recruit women into traditionally male occupations (harder, from what I've seen), for a few decades now. What else, exactly, do you think should be done? I agree with you that diversity is good. However, you can't force people to do what they don't want to do. Do you have any other examples of barriers to men entering nursing, other than personal discomfort with ridiculous stereotypes about sexual orientation? And how exactly do you propose fixing that particular problem? Is there a whole population of men out there who would love to go into nursing if only there weren't a bunch of societal barriers keeping them from doing so??

[MrChicagoRN, RN]

While I feel there should be efforts to increase diversity in all professions, I know of no exclusion of interested and qualified males from the profession.

I'm fine with some PR encouraging men to enter the profession, but oppose any type of affirmative action or preferential treatment over women.