Male Nursing Students

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:o :o I would like to get some opinions on why its so difficult to recruit males into entering the nursing field! Alright mens! It's not just for womens!
How old are you?

27 years old ;)

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Specializes in ICU / PCU / Telemetry / Oncology.

So I have resurrected this thread from 2004, I thought it was interesting to see what kind of conversation was going on 5 or so years ago about men as nursing students. I get the impression we have evolved somewhat which is a great thing. Interested to see more recent contributions and thoughts!

:mnnnrsngrk:

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Specializes in Ortho/Trauma.
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Specializes in Neuroscience.
Hey dont worry about what others think about your career choice. If this is what you wanna do then go for it! Im a male nursing student and there aint a gay bone in my body.

What a sad mentality this is, as if being gay is some sort of crime. *sigh* This macho male attitude has not improved.

I also find it sad to read that a lot of males might feel discouraged from becoming nurses because they get told it's a "woman's job." That right there says that our society still thinks anything predominately female in nature is "less than."

smh.

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Specializes in ICU / PCU / Telemetry / Oncology.
What a sad mentality this is, as if being gay is some sort of crime. *sigh* This macho male attitude has not improved.

I also find it sad to read that a lot of males might feel discouraged from becoming nurses because they get told it's a "woman's job." That right there says that our society still thinks anything predominately female in nature is "less than."

smh.

My high school alma mater has a career day of sorts, where alumni come back and talk to the students about their careers and it gives students an idea of what career path to pursue after graduation. Mind you, I went to an all-boys Catholic school and from what I recall I had never seen (and to this day I think there has not ever been) any male nurses represented among the alumni to come back and speak. The alumni that do speak to the students are predominantly lawyers, doctors, cops, investment bankers, etc and dare I say priests :eek:, all male-dominated professions - oh yeah, there was also an astronaut once. I myself became a lawyer and such is life, I worked in the industry for almost 10 years before I decided that the career move was not part of my being (yet I still say my educational and professional experience has been personally invaluable). I came out of high school wanting to be a doctor (surprise) but life has a way of turning tables on you (too long a story for now) and now I am coming full circle towards nursing. I seemed to have never forgotten my earlier desires to work in the health care world. Nursing is clearly where I need to be, and unfortunately I had no one back then encouraging me in that direction.

I can't name even one of my high school classmates right now who has crossed the barrier of a gender-dominated profession. I can't help to think that maybe, just maybe, had a male nurse presented himself at career day when I was a high school student that I may have very well taken that path. I will never know, but I do know that I have the opportunity to become a nurse now and I would very much love to go back to my school as an RN and present to them that nursing IS a viable profession for all young men and help kill the notion that it's a job for only women or gay men. The idea that "you are men and you have to follow these male-dominated careers" has to stop already.

Oh KR3W, thanks for the compliment!! :D

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Specializes in Neuroscience.
My high school alma mater has a career day of sorts, where alumni come back and talk to the students about their careers and it gives students an idea of what career path to pursue after graduation. Mind you, I went to an all-boys Catholic school and from what I recall I had never seen (and to this day I think there has not ever been) any male nurses represented among the alumni to come back and speak. The alumni that do speak to the students are predominantly lawyers, doctors, cops, investment bankers, etc and dare I say priests :eek:, all male-dominated professions - oh yeah, there was also an astronaut once. I myself became a lawyer and such is life, I worked in the industry for almost 10 years before I decided that the career move was not part of my being (yet I still say my educational and professional experience has been personally invaluable). I came out of high school wanting to be a doctor (surprise) but life has a way of turning tables on you (too long a story for now) and now I am coming full circle towards nursing. I seemed to have never forgotten my earlier desires to work in the health care world. Nursing is clearly where I need to be, and unfortunately I had no one back then encouraging me in that direction.

I can't name even one of my high school classmates right now who has crossed the barrier of a gender-dominated profession. I can't help to think that maybe, just maybe, had a male nurse presented himself at career day when I was a high school student that I may have very well taken that path. I will never know, but I do know that I have the opportunity to become a nurse now and I would very much love to go back to my school as an RN and present to them that nursing IS a viable profession for all young men and help kill the notion that it's a job for only women or gay men. The idea that "you are men and you have to follow these male-dominated careers" has to stop already.

Oh KR3W, thanks for the compliment!! :D

IA.

Good post Paco. Even now in my pre-reqs, it's still mostly female, but occasionally I see some guys in my classes and it's really nice actually. I hope they are getting the support from friends/family. We need to squash the stigma surrounding such gender based assumptions/prejudices.

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I'm a 28 year old male currently doing my pre-reqs and a lot of my teachers have asked their students to introduce themselves; I always find this time interesting because so far I average about 5 girls will say their major is nursing and I am always the only guy.

My family has a long history of many nurses only one being male so I get allot of support from them but the rest of the world not so much, I still get called Gaylord Foker by my friends and get told that I should just be a doctor instead.

However, I do believe that the world is far more ready now for male nurses than say 10 years ago when I first thought of being a nurse but the social stigmas associated with the career made me choose a career in business instead.

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I wrote a ten page english paper about this very subject a couple of semesters ago. Needless to say according to my research, there are some stigmas but the benefits are just as prevalent as well.

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A big issue is that, although good, nursing pay isn't great. And the sad truth is that women in general do not want to date or marry down (recent study on pay inequality reveled that most women would not date a man who made less then them. This is a social stigma that pushes most males to persue hire earning professions. Of course there are always exceptions and that is why we have some male nurses, but until society accepts women as having an equal role in earning for the family as primary bread winner we will not be seeing men doing jobs they want to do but instead jobs they half to do.

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