how do people perceive male nurses in your country

[namzy]

i have been a male nursing student for four years now, in the first place i could not believe being enrolled in a nursing school .The most funny thing is that i chose to be a registered nurse before i left secondary school. I never revealed this to anyone because in my country most people feel nursing is a profession for women and male nurses are described as half man half a woman, cowards and all sorts of names. i have been struggling with this for a long time, my friends use to laugh at me for choosing to be a nurse,sometimes when i go for clinical placements most clients ask me how i feel to be a nurse considering that am a man, now am immune to that and proud that i will be a qualified male nurse. how are you perceived as a male nurse in your country?

[millerje18]

By the way what country are you from?

I live in the usa. and im going into the nusing program this year. i use to not tell people what my career path was and all that other other stuff about nursing because i was ashamed of it. but since i was a sophmore in highschool i slowly started letting people know. i got all different kinds of reactions, from " thats gay" to " i was thinking about that too". And a lot of my friends look up to me and they never cared when i told them. Some of them i feel are trying to follow me and pick up different paths in the nursing field.

But being the only male that i know going into a nursing program is difficult because..uuuuummmm. well just because ill be sticking out since im a guy.

I wont let it bother me.

In the usa i think it's 50/50 the way people percieve male nurses.

[%63theend]

One of my good friends attending school with me is a male. We are both trying to get into the nursing program. I think it is great. I think the old opinions on it being a woman's profession (and men are doctors not women) are dying out :)