Dan Gorman RN...public education in schools regarding men in nursing

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

Nursing - A man's profession? Absolutely, DFCI nurse tells local high school students

Dan Gorman explains why nursing is a good field for men. Does the public's image of male nurses fit the stereotype of overworked, underappreciated, not terribly masculine men portrayed in some movies and television sitcoms?

Hardly, Dana-Farber's Dan Gorman, RN, MSN, OCN, told a group of Boston high school students on May 12. Speaking to a pair of classes at the Health Science Academy, a charter school located on the edge of the Northeastern University campus, Gorman used his own career and research to demonstrate that stereotypical pictures of men in nursing rarely jibe with young people's actual views.

Gorman, who is nurse leader for the Dana 10 infusion area, told students that for most of history, the functions traditionally associated with the field of caring for the sick and wounded, providing comfort to patients, administering medicines, had been performed mostly by men. From Roman times through the American Civil War (when poet Walt Whitman served as a volunteer nurse), men worked beside physicians in treating the ill and injured on battlefields and off.

That started to change in the late 1800s, when Florence Nightingale began the transformation of nursing into a modern profession and opened a new career path for women, whose occupational prospects had been limited largely to teaching and child rearing. Another big influence came at the beginning of the 20th century, when Congress prohibited men from enlisting in the Army as nurses... in effect, steering them into the infantry, Gorman said.

"Since that time, the number of men in nursing has never recovered," remarked Gorman, whose talk reflects Dana-Farber's interest in reaching out to Boston-area students interested in health-care careers. "Today, only about 5 percent of nurses are male."

A 'good field'

To help understand the low numbers, Gorman surveyed 100 male, suburban high school juniors about their views on nursing. The survey, conducted as a graduate research project at Regis College, focused on the perceptions and misperceptions that may be deterring young men from entering the profession.

"Most guys said they thought nursing is a good field; you have to be smart to succeed in it, it's interesting, and there are opportunities for advancement," Gorman remarked. "But they didn't think it pays very much."

The truth is that most nurses are well-compensated, Gorman told the students. "Starting salaries for nurses in Boston are in the $25 per hour range, and experienced nurses can make more than $100,000 a year. Some nurses are even hired right out of college for $50,000."

The stereotype that male nurses are somehow less manly than their brethren took a hit in Gorman's study. "Two-thirds of the guys said that men who go into nursing aren't wimpy, and that nursing isn't necessarily women's work."

Pointing to his own career , which has included stints as an intravenous-therapy nurse for children and adolescents, a pediatric oncology nurse, a consultant for a catheter manufacturer, and, now, an adult oncology nurse, Gorman asserted that the field offers an extraordinary degree of opportunity and variety.

In addition to traditional hospital settings, many nurses today work in sales and marketing, education, research, and business, he noted. Some are engaged in travel nursing, in which they sign up for three- or six-month-long stays at different hospitals around the country. Although weekend or nighttime duty is required for many nurses, the vocation also offers a fair amount of schedule flexibility. Of the 20 nurses on his staff at Dana-Farber, Gorman stated, many are part-time.

Ironically, the very name of the profession "nursing" may explain its apparent lack of attraction for men, Gorman remarked, noting that the word also describes how many new mothers feed their babies. When Gorman asked his survey-takers how many would consider a career as a nurse, only 12 indicated an interest. When he renamed it "registered clinician," to reflect a more gender-neutral title, and asked the same question, the number of interested respondents rose to 37.