Male RN in maternity

Sugarcoma, RN · Jan 2, 2012

We had a male student in my OB clinical. He was VERY nervous and uncomfortable. My instructor was very laid back and had a very sarcastic sense of humor. At EVERY available opportunity she ribbed this poor guy. When demonstrating fetal monitors she chose him to be the mom. There he was on a bed, feet up in stir-ups, pillow under scrub top, with fetal monitors strapped to his imaginary "baby". We all had such a great time we were almost crying laughing. She shoved him into every delivery the patient's consented to, and had him hold, bathe, diaper, cuddle and love on every baby we could get our hands on. By the end of the rotation he was more than comfortable in OB and even remarked that he could not believe he ever sweated the idea. There were plenty of patient's who did not mind a male in the room, although many assumed he was a doc in training. He could cuddle a baby and instruct a breast feeding mother as well as any of us could by the end of the rotation. Tell your boyfriend to keep an open mind, respect his patient's, work hard, and listen to his instructor. He will be just fine. Also, tell him to expect to be denied access to births. All of us were in our ob clinical. Many patient's were just not comfortable with "student nurses" being involved, but he was denied more often than us females were. Which I found especially hypocritical when a male doc was involved. Tell him not to take it personally.

rustynail · Jan 3, 2012

Wow, that is pretty harsh!

For me personally, I had to walk away from the first child-birth, stayed for the second, and helped out with counting and lining up the sponges for the third one.

OB clinicals are a right of passage for all nurses, male or female. Just tell him to hang in there, time is his friend :)

RN_2012, BSN, RN · Jan 3, 2012

My best advice is to not take it personally if the female patient isn't comfortable with a male nurse. It happens and it has no bearing on his ability.

danh3190 · Jan 3, 2012

I never had any problems when I did my OB clinical. Unfortunately we had a pretty good size clincal group so only got to be at one vag birth and one C-section. The family was very nice for both of them.

Been there,done that, ASN, RN · Jan 4, 2012

Don't let him take the abuse from the instructor ..described in the first response!

He should be aware that some moms will not appreciate a male nurse.. and be ASTUTE to their reactions.. don't be afraid to ask if they are uncomfortable.. or to ask a female to handle a particular nurse task.

I am not really modest.. but I was very uncomfortable when a male nurse performed the first check of my episiotomy.

PeaceKeepr · Jan 5, 2012

My OB clinical instructors were great. They would round prior to our arrival and directly as the pt's if they would mind having a male student in with them. My First rotation I went into a C-section of twins. My second rotation I was supporting the mom's leg while she pushed (yeah right in the mix), while a female student was on the other side. This mom didn't have a support group of any kind. I was glad to be there for her, she was appreciative of me and the other student.

I didn't hear of any of the other guys having issues.

Sugarcoma, RN · Jan 6, 2012

Perhaps I should have worded my posting a little differently. It wasn't abuse or mean natured. He made the comment to us on our first day that he was really worried about being in an "female environment" and that he was not comfortable with babies. She genuinely tried to make him feel comfortable by instructing him on holding, cuddling, and caring for babies and making sure he got as much opportunity as we females did, because some of the other nurses, docs, and sadly patients, kinda took the view that he was just there "doing his time" and did not really include him in things. She made sure he was included and an active participant. The ribbing was very good natured and he was an active participant. She was one of the best clinical instructors I have ever had. Both he and myself asked her to pin us.

MN-Nurse, ASN, RN · Jan 6, 2012

If he's lucky, he'll get to work with some patients!

My OB clinical was kind of a drag. Moms mostly refused to have a male student.

I was lucky to have one patient, c-section from a few hours before. It was fantastic, I gave the baby her first bath, did the footprints, assisted the mom with breastfeeding and did all the post c section assessments and cares. Still very grateful for that patient.

Otherwise the guys got shoved in the special care nursery were there was nothing special and we never got to do any cares.

Rick68fl · Feb 10, 2012

I loved OB. I never had any problems with moms not wanting me in there either.

The only problem I had was one day when I was assigned in the nursery. The nursery nurse that day (LPN) would not let me into any deliveries. It was her hang up, not the moms'. Of course, the same nurse wouldn't let me do any hands-on at all with the babies either. All I could do was watch her (spending most of the day gossiping, texting, on the phone or eating).

Every other day was awesome, including other days in the nursery with other nurses.

GitanoRN, BSN, MSN, RN · Mar 2, 2012

needless to say, regarding this on going dilemma with ob/gyn, during my time in the unit i hit the books and came out with flying colors on my test and once again when i took my nclexrn. however, i must be the only male that didn't care to be in ob at all, i always envisioned myself in icu,ccu or trauma. with that said, i been working for the past 15 plus years at a facility that caters to 96% male patients:thankya:

jasonwillhelp · Mar 4, 2012

There was myself and another male nursing student in our clinical group and our clinical instructor was horrible. Right off she made us uncomfortable and always paired us together with first time moms who tend to be more shy. Honestly didn't learn anything from that clinical rotation. We ended up trying to lay low hanging out in the nursery holding the babies. We both have kids at home so we have seen a birth before, but this was not at all a good learning experience for either of us. One day she asked us if we wanted to go hang out in the ER, so of course we did... Not sure how I would have handled it better, but oh well..