My Experience as an Non-political White Male in Nursing / NP School

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I thought I would share with you my experiences as a straight, white, non-political, low 30's - male in nursing. To avoid doxxing myself, I'll just say that I'm in a top 10 student getting my NP. I want to be very clear, I'm not saying men shouldn't go into nursing, I am saying you should understand what you're getting yourself into. Also, these are just my experiences and you could have a totally different experience.

I have an undergraduate in computer science and completed an ABSN program because I thought I'd like to work with people. The actual nursing portion of my program was great; fundamentals, pharmacology, and pathophysiology are all important classes to master. Unfortunately these courses represented a minority of the coursework. The majority of the coursework was spent essentially preaching socialism to us under the veneer of "community health" and "ethics". Now I get it, I was a little order when I went into nursing and I have a different perspective. But every single community health or ethics class was about how evil capitalism is and how there should be a government program for everything. Full disclaimer, I voted for Hilary Clinton twice and politics isn't my thing. The bias was so overwhelming and they didn't even try to hide it. I realize that socialism / communism is fashionable with the younger crowd, but I wish I would have learned about actual community health or ethical issues in nursing.

Race Issues. Yet another disclaimer, race couldn't mean less to me. We had several lectures and guest seminars from prominent people in campus leadership tell us that it wasn't possible to racist against white people because white people have all the power. It was just ironic because that statement came from a dean at an IVY league school that is a person of color. We had a few students that were obsessed with race. We would be learning about cardiac issues and the medications that you use to treat the conditions. For those that don't know, African Americans typically don't respond well to Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) and are typically placed on calcium channel blockers. This one girl in class went on about how it was systemic racism and prior experiences being a slave that causes African Americans to have poor cardiac health. The professor went along with it.

To summarize my ABSN experience, I learned that it was never the patients fault for their own poor outcome. The poor outcome was entirely due to being oppressed because of their race or sex; or there isn't a government program available for them to utilize. The lack of a government program to help afford a generic medication that costs less than $5/90 day supply is probably due to racism.

I'll post about my experience in NP school later, but as a male I'd be aware of the following before I signed up for nursing school.

  • If I could describe nursing school in one word it would be gynocentric; if you gave me two words, I'd say extreme SJWs.
  • If you are science minded, put in the extra work and go to medical school. Trust me, I have friends that did this and the majority of your time is spent learning actual medicine. I had a semester long "evidence based practice" class where we learned that grounding yourself can improve your mental health. Grounding, as in grounding yourself to an electrical outlet or going barefoot in the grass. I've taken several classes on electricity and magnetism in my undergrad. "Grounding" yourself will do absolutely nothing but we learned pseudo-science instead of medicine.
  • If you are a-political or heaven forbid lean conservative; learn to keep your ideas to yourself. I got much better grades on assignments when I learned how to write like the reincarnation of Karl Marx.
  • Group work can be a very social thing. Group work in computer science focused on results and objective goals, does your code compile? Did your robot fall over and die? Nursing group work is about how people feel about the work. It's less objective and more subjective.
  • Your program will be mostly run by women and very effeminate men. My program has a prom every year. In all fairness, my computer science department would order bunch of kegs once a month for the students.

I'm not saying don't go into nursing. Nursing is a great profession and it's very rewarding. If I had to do it over again, I would have taken the additional year and applied to medical school.

I'll share more about my experience in NP school so far at another time.

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Im a black male in South Georgia and went to school where there were no black teachers for nursing and my class was mostly black (about 60%) and had 3 more black males in school. My instructors were professional, always told the class that politics would not be discussed or tolerated unless it was related to the current topic in class, no personal affiliations that could be discussed in class, taught the class in depth, we were taught that demographics played an role in an patient outcomes (and yes it was sometimes the patient fault for having 3 strokes or gaining 10lbs of fluid in CHF), and if you can't do a group project and enjoy it, then nursing won't be for you! Theres more than taking care of a patient, you have to have people skills to!

I just think your personal views clouded you in class and thinking its personal. You'd better get a tough skin, real quick! I have been called the N-word on my floor from a patient, been told they don't want a black to take care of their mother, or flat out try to lie and said I never entered their room the whole day (but not knowing I have a tracker that tracks my movements on the floor all day).

I don't blame not one white person on this board about my past life, you know why? Because I don't dwell on what the next person is doing! I move on and made a way for myself and my family! We live nice with a house nearly paid off and have an heavy equity in it now! My advice is do your job and just brush off what people say as long as it's not harmful!

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Specializes in Chaplaincy to Nursing.

Insofar as OP's account is accurate this is disturbing. That said, I question the extent to which it possibly can be. What he is describing is typical of the humanities and quant-light social sciences, which can operate that way because unlike nursing they have no professional testing criteria. How can that much time be dedicated to non-core topics if students have to pass NP and NCLEX exams?

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On 5/25/2020 at 9:25 PM, Yodi2007 said:

Im a black male in South Georgia and went to school where there were no black teachers for nursing and my class was mostly black (about 60%) and had 3 more black males in school. My instructors were professional, always told the class that politics would not be discussed or tolerated unless it was related to the current topic in class, no personal affiliations that could be discussed in class, taught the class in depth, we were taught that demographics played an role in an patient outcomes (and yes it was sometimes the patient fault for having 3 strokes or gaining 10lbs of fluid in CHF), and if you can't do a group project and enjoy it, then nursing won't be for you! Theres more than taking care of a patient, you have to have people skills to!

I just think your personal views clouded you in class and thinking its personal. You'd better get a tough skin, real quick! I have been called the N-word on my floor from a patient, been told they don't want a black to take care of their mother, or flat out try to lie and said I never entered their room the whole day (but not knowing I have a tracker that tracks my movements on the floor all day).

I don't blame not one white person on this board about my past life, you know why? Because I don't dwell on what the next person is doing! I move on and made a way for myself and my family! We live nice with a house nearly paid off and have an heavy equity in it now! My advice is do your job and just brush off what people say as long as it's not harmful!

Hello, question, why did you write this: "Im a black male in South Georgia and went to school where there were no black teachers for nursing and my class was mostly black (about 60%) and had 3 more black males in school."

Why is this relevant to the OP post? What does the color skin ratio of student to instructors have to do with anything he posted?

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On 5/25/2020 at 5:03 PM, unknownstudent said:

I thought I would share with you my experiences as a straight, white, non-political, low 30's - male in nursing. To avoid doxxing myself, I'll just say that I'm in a top 10 student getting my NP. I want to be very clear, I'm not saying men shouldn't go into nursing, I am saying you should understand what you're getting yourself into. Also, these are just my experiences and you could have a totally different experience.

I have an undergraduate in computer science and completed an ABSN program because I thought I'd like to work with people. The actual nursing portion of my program was great; fundamentals, pharmacology, and pathophysiology are all important classes to master. Unfortunately these courses represented a minority of the coursework. The majority of the coursework was spent essentially preaching socialism to us under the veneer of "community health" and "ethics". Now I get it, I was a little order when I went into nursing and I have a different perspective. But every single community health or ethics class was about how evil capitalism is and how there should be a government program for everything. Full disclaimer, I voted for Hilary Clinton twice and politics isn't my thing. The bias was so overwhelming and they didn't even try to hide it. I realize that socialism / communism is fashionable with the younger crowd, but I wish I would have learned about actual community health or ethical issues in nursing.

Race Issues. Yet another disclaimer, race couldn't mean less to me. We had several lectures and guest seminars from prominent people in campus leadership tell us that it wasn't possible to racist against white people because white people have all the power. It was just ironic because that statement came from a dean at an IVY league school that is a person of color. We had a few students that were obsessed with race. We would be learning about cardiac issues and the medications that you use to treat the conditions. For those that don't know, African Americans typically don't respond well to Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) and are typically placed on calcium channel blockers. This one girl in class went on about how it was systemic racism and prior experiences being a slave that causes African Americans to have poor cardiac health. The professor went along with it.

To summarize my ABSN experience, I learned that it was never the patients fault for their own poor outcome. The poor outcome was entirely due to being oppressed because of their race or sex; or there isn't a government program available for them to utilize. The lack of a government program to help afford a generic medication that costs less than $5/90 day supply is probably due to racism.

I'll post about my experience in NP school later, but as a male I'd be aware of the following before I signed up for nursing school.

  • If I could describe nursing school in one word it would be gynocentric; if you gave me two words, I'd say extreme SJWs.
  • If you are science minded, put in the extra work and go to medical school. Trust me, I have friends that did this and the majority of your time is spent learning actual medicine. I had a semester long "evidence based practice" class where we learned that grounding yourself can improve your mental health. Grounding, as in grounding yourself to an electrical outlet or going barefoot in the grass. I've taken several classes on electricity and magnetism in my undergrad. "Grounding" yourself will do absolutely nothing but we learned pseudo-science instead of medicine.
  • If you are a-political or heaven forbid lean conservative; learn to keep your ideas to yourself. I got much better grades on assignments when I learned how to write like the reincarnation of Karl Marx.
  • Group work can be a very social thing. Group work in computer science focused on results and objective goals, does your code compile? Did your robot fall over and die? Nursing group work is about how people feel about the work. It's less objective and more subjective.
  • Your program will be mostly run by women and very effeminate men. My program has a prom every year. In all fairness, my computer science department would order bunch of kegs once a month for the students.

I'm not saying don't go into nursing. Nursing is a great profession and it's very rewarding. If I had to do it over again, I would have taken the additional year and applied to medical school.

I'll share more about my experience in NP school so far at another time.

For a person that is not concerned about race, you brought up quite a few racial topics and made it known that your program is predominately run by women.

If race doesn't matter to you, then why did you need to make it known, that you are a non-political white male in Nursing/NP school? What is wrong with a program that is predominately run by women? What is wrong with the one girl for expressing her thoughts on racism and slavery in class?

Uh oh. . .there are women everywhere. Oh, no...race is being discussed in class. Wah... You should have stuck with computer science.

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Tbh a lot of people don’t like hearing about race or social justice problems because it makes them uncomfortable. And ignorance is comfortable. And white people have the privilege of being able to ignore it if they please because it doesn’t really affect them much. Especially the males. Minorities don’t have this privilege because we’re faced with these issues everyday. It's literally thrown in our faces you couldn’t ignore it if you wanted. It’s not something we get to ignore. You know black women giving birth are 4x more likely to die from neglect from physicians than a white women is? Look it up it’s true. I’m sure they taught you in nursing school. Even we’re seeing with coronavirus it’s disproportionately affecting minorities and they’re dying from it at higher rates because of uneven quality of medical care. Black bodies don’t get the privilege of having good medical care as often. Part of the reason why is capitalism. That’s why I think nursing schools are trying to drill this in to nurses because these statistics are shameful. We as a country pay the most for healthcare yet compared to other first worlds have the worst healthcare outcomes. Even American life expectancy is going down slowly. It’s terrible. It’s capitalism/ for profit healthcare system where the profit is more important than the life. But as a nurse if you know the issues you can make a change. Of course nursing has a lot of science involved but that’s not all the knowledge you need to take care of a human person. You need to know these issues and you need to know about how capitalistic the healthcare system is in this country so you can understand the outcomes. Even in medical school you’ll have a good amount of classes that are more ethics related than science. Its an important aspect of healthcare. This is only one of the reasons why I as a black girl am going into nursing I’m aware of the issues and I want to change them. I want to advocate for people who don’t get their voices to be heard regardless of color, because I know what it feels like not being heard. You’re not just a healthcare provider you’re an advocate you gotta know about the issues in order to do that.

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Keep in mind that these issues will vary greatly depending on where and what school you attend. You cannot say that this is how it is everywhere because that is what you experienced.

Don't get me wrong, I am with you in as much as schools are brainwashing people with political tripe, I've experienced it myself. And yes there is a huge problem with all sorts of discrimination including political. In my opinion, politics is out of bounds when working in the medical field, but some people just can't resist. I never offer my political opinion when in a professional capacity, nor do I enjoy hearing anyone else's.

While attending school, you will need to write as if you are communist in order to get good grades in certain classes. But you still can think independently.

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
On 6/6/2020 at 2:53 PM, juniper222 said:

While attending school, you will need to write as if you are communist in order to get good grades in certain classes. But you still can think independently.

How many Study-Abroad programs take place in communist countries? I believe very few. Too bad. Nothing like personal experience to inform one's opinions.

Until then I guess thinking people will still have to write papers "like the reincarnation of Karl Marx" (love this).

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Specializes in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

Am I the only one that isn't really understanding what the OP is actually trying to say or the point he's trying to get across?

Other than that, it just seems like he went to nursing school to assess the political situation IN nursing school rather than going to nursing school for nursing.

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8 hours ago, barcode120x said:

Am I the only one that isn't really understanding what the OP is actually trying to say or the point he's trying to get across?

Other than that, it just seems like he went to nursing school to assess the political situation IN nursing school rather than going to nursing school for nursing.

@barcode120x let me clarify for you. I went into nursing to help people. I didn't go into nursing to be morally lectured about my 'original sin' aka skin color.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to exhibit A of what I'm talking about.

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Minorities don’t have this privilege because we’re faced with these issues everyday. It's literally thrown in our faces you couldn’t ignore it if you wanted. It’s not something we get to ignore. You know black women giving birth are 4x more likely to die from neglect from physicians than a white women is? Look it up it’s true. I’m sure they taught you in nursing school.

Oh, I've only been told this 1,000 times so far. Does anyone mention any of the pre-existing hypertension that leads to higher rates of pre-eclampsia? No, it's much easier to just say "racism". If medical providers were truly racist towards black women, you'd expect to see 4x lower the death rates from black women served by black physicians. Using that same logic, man kill themselves at twice the rate of women, so is society sexist towards men? Hint, no, people are individuals.

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Even we’re seeing with coronavirus it’s disproportionately affecting minorities and they’re dying from it at higher rates because of uneven quality of medical care. Black bodies don’t get the privilege of having good medical care as often

Again, pre-existing factors explain this much more than systemic systems of structural institutions, "racism".

*edit, this just in, bald men have higher rates of COVID and have worse outcomes. Does this mean that the healthcare system is discriminatory towards bald men? No. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/bald-men-higher-risk-severe-case-covid-19-research-finds/

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You’re not just a healthcare provider you’re an advocate you gotta know about the issues in order to do that. 

No, I'm not. I don't have to "advocate" for the insane and unfounded ideas of other people. Also, capitalism makes things cheaper and improves quality. It's true of cellphones, cars, computers, and healthcare. Why is South Korea a better place to live than North Korea? Why did East Germany have put up barbed wire to prevent people from escaping to West Germany? Capitalism has lifted the majority of the world out of abject poverty.

Have you seen the FBI crime data about is most at risk of being murdered and by whom? That data definitely gets left out of nursing education.

And before you go there, I'm a two time Obama voter and I gave money to Hilary for her 2016 campaign.

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Specializes in Family Practice/Primary Care.
On 6/10/2020 at 8:34 PM, unknownstudent said:

And before you go there, I'm a two time Obama voter and I gave money to Hilary for her 2016 campaign.

So, lets be straight, you ARE a political person. Which is fine, welcome to my club (even if we appear to be opposites). What is sad; is I largely had the same experience though my nursing instructors never hammered a grade because of differing beliefs, and actually went so far as to encourage it. (Did have a history professor do that though.)

The SJW type events basically saying because I was a white male I was either A bad, B complicit, C should be ashamed, or D all of the above were common, and I detested them. Vocally.

The only time I saw any racist/sexist behavior was when a black woman didn't want a white man in her room, so I had to leave. Of course, we had a discussion early in the program about historic racism and how wrong it was if a patient refused a black nurse. White men? No concern.

Bad news for you, even med schools are taking time away from real coursework for it. (Do a search for "medical school social justice", it'll make you sick.) Worse news for you, you voted for this. (I am glad you read the crime stats though, kind of a wake up call, isn't it?)

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