Does being a Male open more doors in the nursing profession

Assailants · May 3, 2010

i dont know about job prospects, but i honestly think that being male helped me get accepted to the nursing programs i've applied to. my GPA is....mediocre... 3.2
but i've been accepted to every nursing program i applied to. i just cant find any reason to justify that when my female peers were rejected from a lot of the same programs with better GPAs...
that having been said, AllNurses needs to get a manly male nurse smiley. im tired of having to use the female nurse smiley dammit! but here it is again.

lol dude...seriously...I'd imagined it'd be pretty easy to make one. It took like 2 mins to photoshop that one to make it look like a dude lol...it only they'd put on up lol.

ParkerBC,MSN,RN, PhD, RN · May 3, 2010

anoetos,

i agree. i know the statement was not serious.

listen (there can be no argument here)... by sheer volume it is apparent that minorities will be under-represented- hence the programs instated to bolster their numbers. you don’t actually think that just as many males apply for nursing school as do females do you?

absolutely not. i think this is where the problem begins. help me to understand why minorities are under-represented. not trying to be funny here, but i am curious to know your perspective.

as far as the programs that you are insisting upon, (which i see no indication there is a guaranteed agreement for admittance into medical school), here are a few more links for students who are not minorities (mind you, this is just in california where medical school is just as competitive if not more so than the vast majority of geographical regions in the us):

the information is in a pdf format provided by the school. the information is under statistics of the program. if i am not mistaken, 100% were placed in medical school except for 2006. there were three who were not, but graduated with a masters from the program. it doesn’t say it those three applied or not. it could be that maybe they changed their minds. on iu’s application, it asks for race and you can not submit the application unless it is filled in. the school’s website also gives definitions of “educationally or socioeconomically disadvantaged.” of course it doesn’t say, “if you are asian, hispanic, or african-american , you are eligible to apply.”

you don’t want a 3.0 gpa student being your doctor…? how about the 3.9 gpa iu grad from med school being your physician…. would you credit their success in medical school to this program? or did they have it too easy, and thus you would prefer the majority representative, whom you think is obviously more capable, because he was admitted into medical school the “traditional” way?

i don’t think such programs should exist period. it is known that it takes a very special and highly intelligent individual to go to medical school. my wife and i both applied to iu school of medicine. my mcat overall is 30.8 hers 29.2, my gpa 3.91 hers 3.78 and she is hispanic. she got in and i did not. you think minorities are under-represented and i do not. she agrees with me. do i think she will make a terrible doctor? no, she is highly intelligent, but her statistics prove that. had she had a 3.15 and an mcat of 22, i would have discouraged her from applying. if she applied and was accepted, i would question her ability to practice medicine.

here’s the thing and she agrees. we all have the same opportunities. it is what we decide to do with those opportunities that separate us from the rest of the crowd. we both grew up poor, but understood quickly that if we wanted out of that life, we needed to work especially hard, which we both did.

it’s not a question of wanting a majority doctor to treat me. it’s a question of wanting a competent one.

MJ415 · May 4, 2010

Congrats on your high GPA and MCAT score; it appears that you are a determined individual as you have done so well in your studies. If IU did not accept you, I'm positive there are 10 other med schools that will accept you based on your achievements. Your viewpoints seem to be legitimate, although I do not entirely understand why you believe that minorities are not underrepresented. By definition alone, "minority" points to under-representation. However, the term "minority" is relative- as far as nursing is concerned, males are certainly minorities. On the other hand, here in the Bay Area, Asians can hardly be considered minorities when applying to medical school because of their prominence in medicine throughout our health care system. (It is possible that I am wrong about the latter statement because I have no way of confirming it.)

I have always considered that the term "underrepresented" (in reference to school admissions) refers to those groups which are considered to be deficient in numbers pertaining to age, race, and gender in relation to the applying population as a whole in mind.

The AAMC defines Underrepresented as:

"Underrepresented in medicine means those racial and ethnic populations that are underrepresented in the medical profession relative to their numbers in the general population"

http://www.aamc.org/meded/urm/start.htm

Last year I attended an AMSA conference at UC Davis. At this conference, a number of deans of admissions from top ranked medical schools were present for questioning. Based on their responses, I think it's important to know that med school admissions are not based solely on scholastic achievements- there are many variables, such as course work load, letters of reference, work experience, interpersonal communication (via interview), etc. I think that this is noteworthy because although GPA and MCAT scores carry significant weight- there are 4.0 students with 30+MCAT scores that are turned away from programs for one reason or another.

The purpose of me bringing up qualified vs. unqualified is that there is such a substantial variance between performance in school and performance on the job. A doctor who started off with a basic qualifying MCAT and GPA, has just as much of a shot at becoming an excellent physician as one whom maxed out on the very same qualifications. Scholarship and MCAT scores are not always an accurate predictor of how well a physician will do in their residency and beyond.