bill baldwin

Try to change it, and you will have a rebellion on your hands. Especially since this demand to change the name typically comes from students or non-nurses. Those of us in the trenches long ago learned to deal. If you want to become a nurse, or be a nurse, perhaps you should, too. Sorry to be blunt. No offense intended. This is semantical window-dressing and nothing more. If somebody doesn't want to be a nurse solely because of its name, then I don't want them to be a nurse because of everything else that implies about that person's readiness to BE a nurse. ~faith, Timothy. It is estimated that 50+ million American males would prefer a male nurse over a female for intimate (call it pelvic) care. That's one third of the male population. This means (in addition to more nurses in general) that a 75/25% gender split is required in female-to-male nurses. Right now, we have a 92/8% balance. All the male nurses currently being kept off the OB/GYN and L&D corridors by female patient demands still aren't enough to meet the needs of male patients who request them. Male nurses are 2:1 more like to quite the profession in their first five years. The main reasons given is their self-image in nursing and the fact that they can't deal with the gynecocracy. Anything that brings more men into nursing and keeps them there would be a great help to the male patients who want them present in far greater numbers. The name "nurse" has always been a problem for attracting men into the profession in greater numbers... and that's the bigger issue.

Yes, this is a BIG problem with attracting males into the profession. The female dominion of nursing, "The Nightingale Syndrome", is actually only 150 years old. But that has been enough time for the label "nurse" to have acquired a "female" connotation in the minds of the general public. There does not seem to be a way to change this to a genderless term. Female nurses are very comfortable with the description and have every right to maintain it. The best suggestion I have heard is to change "male nurses" to another name and leave the female practioners as "nurses". 800 years before females started to dominate the field, the term for males performing nursing-type medical services was "HOSPITALLERS" . In some Crusading military orders they actually traded chainmail for boiled linens as they shifted duties from road patrols and ramparts to hospital wards. The name has a strong masculine history. It implies, "Are you man enough to do this job?", which is exactly what is needed to bring more men into medical nursing, instead of just paramedic fields. "I'd like a nurse," could someday mean, "I want a female caregiver." "I'd like a hospitaller," could someday mean, "I want a male caregiver." Seems simple enough. Just set a date for the switch... and change a problem as quickly as resetting a clock in time.