Since the "man in my room" thread got closed, I thought I would try a different track. I want to focus on something a little different.
We know the emotional responses we got to the idea of men providing intimate care of women. What I want to discuss is the issues affecting the intimate care of men by women.
If any of you have read my prior posts on this subject, you are aware of my own difficulties with opposite sex care. To recap, my own experience involved a sexually abusive situation. I am male, and when I was in the hospital as a teenager, the female nurse decided that I needed a bed bath. So that is what she proceeded to do. And much to my embarrassment, I got an erection during said bath. I wasn't aroused, it just happened. As any guy can tell you, we just don't have direct control over that function. This nurse decided she had the "cure" and proceeded to strike me in the scrotum. A lot of damage was done, physically and emotionally. One testicle healed in way that would not allow me to father children (antibodies). I'm skipping over a lot of detail in the interest of brevity, but that's what happened. :imbar
I have heard over the years many comments as to a female nurse's reaction to the male erection. A number of times I have heard reference to causing a pain stimulus to stop the erection from occurring. The stimulus usually involved striking the genitalia with an object or by using the middle finger to "thump" or "flick" either the member or a testicle. I have heard several members of the military tell me this was done to them when they were hospitalized while in service, sometimes while recovering from combat wounds. In my situation, it could be that this nurse didn't get the desired result from just using the middle finger, so she resorted to something more forceful.
My questions to you all is this. How widespread is this? How many of you learned to do that in school? Maybe learned it after school? Have any of you ever done it to your male patients? Ever hear other nurses talk about it?
I'm not trolling and I'm not joking. It happened to me and others that I know of. It would be nice to get enough information together to come up with an article for a major nursing publication. That would bring the issue to the forefront and maybe launch an initiative to stop this brutal practice. Men treated this way could easily be your father, husband, son, brother, other family member, significant other, best friend, neighbor, or coworker.
One other thing. Given the overwhelming presence of women in nursing, male patients are often expected to just accept intimate care from women nurses without complaint. Often times there may be no other choice. But other times there are. It appears to me that female nurses (and other medical staff) have such unlimited access to male patients that they practically take it for granted. Many of the rules in place defining or limiting what male providers can do to female patients often don't apply to females in the care of men. I realize it varies among different facilities, and I have read on this forum that there are some men doing intimate procedures on female patients. However, I suspect the majority of facilities do put some kind of limit on what the men can do. Gender bias results when members of one sex are held to rules that the other sex is exempt from. The outcome of the bias is an imbalance where it is difficult for the female providers to effectively empathize with the male patients. That results the females taking an almost lackadaisical, casual, or blase' view of the modesty and privacy needs of male patients. For me it has been an uphill battle many times when receiving care just to get them to close doors or curtains, or provide draping. It's not the men I have this problem with, it's mostly women. To me treating a patient with respect and privacy specifically means covering my exposed body for comfort. To deprive me of that is to deny their obligations. I want female medical personnel to value my privacy as much as they value their own.
Having gone through infertility treatments with my wife and have stood next to her as she received care and I have noticed that privacy is never an issue. During breast exams only one side was exposed at a time. I have endured several exams where I was instructed to strip down to just underwear and wait for the doc. When the doc enters the room there is a moment where anybody outside can see past the doc. When the doc gets to the genital exam you have to lower the shorts to midthigh so you are essentially naked, and then have to bend over the table for the digital. I know men who have had this done by female docs. Absolutely cruel. At least I have only had male docs for this. I have had my share of ER visits over the years, GSW, plane crash, fire/smoke injuries, etc. Every time I have had to battle for my privacy/dignity/decency. When you are hurt that's the last thing you should have to worry about.
Any other men here experience this? Your thoughts on this ladies?
I have nothing against women. I find myself in agreement with many women here when it comes to personal care. Please don't think I'm on a tirade. If we can get some constructive dialog going maybe we can learn and do better for others.
Let's keep it nice so the mods don't close the thread. :wink2:
I have never heard of this practice until I came to AN. This is not being taught in my school. I would never think to do such a thing, it just seems wrong. As far as a male patient requesting a male caregiver, I think that is his right and would do my best to accommodate him.
I'm curious as to what you would do if you encountered a patient, such as myself, who might say, "look, there's just no way I can allow a female to do this intimate procedure." How would you accomodate him? Could you call another department or floor to see if a guy was available? Would your facility allow you to do that? Without general anesthesia or heavy sedation I just couldn't allow myself to be put in that situation.
We would not be allowed to call another floor to get someone who doesn't work in the OR. There are factors such as sterile technique etc that come into play in this situation.We don't float out and other departments do not float to us.
I could call to see if the main OR(I do Ortho exclusively) had a male to do the procedure but even then this might be very difficult because we don't have many male OR nurses and in my state an RN has to do many of these procedures-like foleys, prepping etc. There are male residents but I'm not sure you'd want one putting in your foley-I've had to stop and teach many of these guys the meaning of sterile. Truly scary sometimes.
Luckily, I've never had a male patient ask for another male and this is good because we just do not have the resources to accomodate this request on evenings or on call. In those cases, you get who you get. I do make sure to protect my patients modesty though. They call me Queen Blanket because I always make sure my patient is covered and warm!
Request an all male staff. It is your right. If they won't accomodate
you find someone else who will! In the meantime complain to your insurance provider. It is your right to choose who participates in
providing your healthcare.
Complaining to the insurance provider will not make more male nurses available. :rolleyes:If you want an all male staff and the hospital cannot accomodate you, I would recommend you cancel your surgery. Even better, ask these questions before hand. This way, the hospital knows about it, and if they can't accommodate you, they may suggest you go elsewhere. Good luck trying to find a place that can, though. Something like 90% of nurses are female. You might have luck if it's an elective procedure but in the case of emergency surgery, sorry, just not going to happen where the patient dictates what staff is in the room.
Actually, I think that only about 5% of nurses are men. So let's do the math. If 50% of our patients are male, that would mean that male nurses would get tied up putting foleys in men much more frequently than female nurses would put foleys in women. (Lord, I can't wait to get out of this racket and back to Africa where people tend not to complain about the care they receive!)
We're arguing hypothetical situations anyway. The only time a female nurse has asked me to place a foley in one of her male patients was when she had difficulty gettting it past the prostate. More often than not, the times that I have asked a female nurse to place a foley in one of my female patients is when I couldn't find the meatus.
On a few occasions a female patient has let me know that she would prefer a female nurse place a foley. I cannot recall a male patient requesting that a male nurse place a foley in him.
These are my anecdotal observations, but from what I've read on this thread so far, I suspect that the hypothetical situations described are relatively rare.
I have not started my nursing program yet, so take this for what it's worth.
When I first read the OP I was shocked. I can't figure out for the life of me what a man's erection has to do with *any* care he is recieving unless it was something having to do directly with the member and a medical need for it to be flaccid.
I had to ask my husband after I read this. He spent a great deal of his childhood in hospitals and he has had many things done during his military service and he said he had a nurse inflict pain on his member (not scrotum) when he was around 13 years old. The thought of anyone doing that to him, or my son, brother, father makes me furious and like I said, I am not even in a program yet but you can be sure that your story touched at least 1 future RN because this will never be a practice of mine, taught or not.
I don't have anything to add on patient privacy other than it isn't unreasonable to expect to not have everything flashed to everyone who walks past your door, and to have same sex care given if the patient is that uncomfortable. Maybe those who deal on a daily basis with the nudity of others take that for granted because it's just something they are so used to? I suspect more men would prefer a man over a woman but they don't speak up because female nurses are so much more common.
I'm so sorry this happened to you. As a student now I can tell you that I have never heard or seen this before. I was a CNA for 12 yrs and never saw this. I hope you filed a suit and that nurse knows what she did to you. As a student, the very 1st semester it is drilled into our heads to 'do no harm'.
I had a patient who was always touching himself. It took me awhile to figure out why I was picking up so many towels on the floor next to his bed (Duh!). I finally had a very candid discussion about what he was doing and we both agreed that I would pick up only 1 towel on my shift and he would need to hold off with the touching until the next shift. Although it is not related, the last thing I wanted to do was to inflict pain to his groin area.
I'm curious as to what you would do if you encountered a patient, such as myself, who might say, "look, there's just no way I can allow a female to do this intimate procedure." How would you accomodate him? Could you call another department or floor to see if a guy was available? Would your facility allow you to do that? Without general anesthesia or heavy sedation I just couldn't allow myself to be put in that situation.
If I couldn't accomodate you I would be honest and state as much. If it wasn't an emergency I would advise you to re-schedule and have you talk to your surgeon about your request. It would be hard to meet your request in my current hospital.
If it was an emergency I would listen to your fears and try and comfort you in any way I can. I'd ask what would bring you the most peace. I would assure you I would protect your body like my own and be with you every step of the way. Chances are I could get you a male nurse after your surgery as a bedside nurse and would help to do that. Most nurses I know are vey concerned about patient dignity. I would hope reassuring you would get you to have a necessary surgery.
If it was an emergency I would listen to your fears and try and comfort you in any way I can. I'd ask what would bring you the most peace. I would assure you I would protect your body like my own and be with you every step of the way.
If I saw a nurse ever do that to a patient i would call the police and report them for assault and battery.
[i'm curious as to what you would do if you encountered a patient, such as myself, who might say, "look, there's just no way I can allow a female to do this intimate procedure." How would you accomodate him? Could you call another department or floor to see if a guy was available? Would your facility allow you to do that? Without general anesthesia or heavy sedation I just couldn't allow myself to be put in that situation.]
I work in the OR as well and we don't have a lot of male nurses. I would do my best and try and get someone but the problem is as Witchy said OR nurses do not float to other areas, and nurses from other areas cannot come to work in the OR. If there were no male nurses i would ask a surgeon or anaesthetist if they were willing to help because the majority of those are male. Most I know would be willing to help in this sort of situation. In my state nurses are not allowed to put in male catheters anyway, docs only.
I am male, and when I was in the hospital as a teenager, the female nurse decided that I needed a bed bath. And much to my embarrassment, I got an erection during said bath. This nurse decided she had the "cure" and proceeded to strike me in the scrotum. A lot of damage was done, physically and emotionally. One testicle healed in way that would not allow me to father children (antibodies).
I would hope the nurse got fired! What a cruel thing for anyone to do to someone else. Sorry it happened to you.
If I couldn't accomodate you I would be honest and state as much. If it wasn't an emergency I would advise you to re-schedule and have you talk to your surgeon about your request. It would be hard to meet your request in my current hospital.
If it was an emergency I would listen to your fears and try and comfort you in any way I can. I'd ask what would bring you the most peace. I would assure you I would protect your body like my own and be with you every step of the way. Chances are I could get you a male nurse after your surgery as a bedside nurse and would help to do that. Most nurses I know are vey concerned about patient dignity. I would hope reassuring you would get you to have a necessary surgery.
I have to agree with Leslie, you sound like an excellent nurse. We need more like you. :)
Even if you can't accomodate the patients' wishes at the time, just taking the time to listen and doing the best you can helps a lot.
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Virgo_RN, BSN, RN
3,543 Posts
I have never heard of this practice until I came to AN. This is not being taught in my school. I would never think to do such a thing, it just seems wrong. As far as a male patient requesting a male caregiver, I think that is his right and would do my best to accommodate him.