I try not to be too sensitive about stuff like this, but it is discouraging that even today people sometimes feel they have to preface the word "nurse" with the word "male," when their nurse happens to be a man. It is discouraging to see a supposedly progressive news organization like Yahoo! continuing to "otherize" us males by using such verbiage:
London (AFP) - A Filipino male nurse was jailed for life with a minimum of 35 years on Tuesday for poisoning 21 patients with insulin at a British hospital, two of whom died. Nurse jailed for life for poisoning patients - Yahoo News
It reminds me of when I was telling my friends and family I was going to nursing school. I remember how my pastor told me, "Do you really want to spend your life being a male nurse?" To which I replied, "No, I want to spend my life being a nurse."
Seriously? What if people called someone a "female doctor" or a "female lawyer?" This is silly.
I remember way back in clinicals at the VA a male veteran asked me if I was gay. I said no, I was married to a woman, etc. He asked to see a picture of her. I obliged. He said okay, you can touch me. Afterwards I felt embarrassed for myself. I should not have to defend my profession or throw my gay colleagues under the bus like that.
I know, flame me or say these are "microaggressions." Maybe you are right. But it is not fair either to our male or female colleagues.
I'm wondering how and if male nurses are portrayed on tv? The last medical drama I watched regularly was 'ER' wayyyy back in the day, so I don't know how far the culture has advanced in portraying nurses. Can anyone shed light on this, are there any male nurses portrayed in popular culture entertainment? The media typically shapes and shifts(or adjusts) peoples attitudes on cultural issues.
This is my role model, complete with X-Ray Clipboard. And, YES, I do have one.
Male Nurse
Action Figure
Physicians prescribe, Nurses Provide (says the package)
The best advice is to lighten up. What you don't treat as a problem typically doesn't become one.
As a recent media controversy about on professor's remarks in the NYT pointed out, all your need to do to understand the wisdom of that is contrast the friendship circles of most Asian college students with that of many black students. The former act as if race doesn't matter and it doesn't. They have lots of white friends. (Indeed, at times I've had about as many Asian friends as fellow whites.) Unfortunately, black students often act as if race does matter immensely and as a result it does. Friendships don't work if one party is on pins and needles. The same is true with male and female. Relax and lighten up.
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As an EMT who became a "male nursing assistant" at a children't hospital where the female to male ratio was about 200 to 2 for nurses, I never treated it as something that mattered. I liked the work too much for that. Besides, quite a few of those nurses were single and pretty. I wouldn't have minded being the only guy on the nursing staff rather than one of a few. I liked my uniqueness.
When I worked in Hem-Onc caring for little kids, neither the kids nor their parents seem to care if I was a guy or not. What they cared about was getting good care, particularly in the middle of the night when expertise gets rather thin. That I gave and they were happy.
When I transferred to the teen unit on days, I found being a guy more interesting. On nights the nurse/assistant line blurred, so some parents and a few residents may have considered me a nurse. Hem-Onc on days was, after all, RN-only. On days that wasn't so. The division of labor was quite strict, so I was obviously the assistant.
That said, I found that enough of my patients, mostly the teen girls, treated my flippant remarks as if they were the advice of their attending physician, that I had to take care with what I said. After all, I told myself, with my age and general appearance, early thirties with a beard and all, I did look like one of the more senior residents. And except for my dislike of memorization and organic chemistry, I'd have had no trouble with medical school. My brother is a MD, as are two of my nephews.
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I know some female nurses get hot and bothered when patients treat a male nurse more seriously than they are treated. A nurse friend of mine who worked in a Seattle ICU complained of that to me. I was tempted to tell her that her frustration was not constructive, that she should watch that male nurse and see if there were aspects of how he handled patients that meant they respected him more. Perhaps he seemed calmer and more in control. Perhaps he had a more ready answer to their questions. Perhaps he showed more patience. People often equate patience with competence and easy excitability or frustration with less competence.
I've also worked at jobs where maintaining control of a crowd is important. A lot rests in your attitude. Show confidence and expect to be obeyed and you will. Act uncertain, perhaps with that 'up talk' speech that's more common in women than men, and you won't get that respect.
One final remark. Were I a "female nurse," I'd be delighted that this killer of 21 patients was described as a "male nurse." Anything to separate me from him would be appreciated. Adding that he was "Filipino" was more unfair. In the UK it could make some patients paranoid if their nurse is male and does not seem to be British. I can easily imagine a Monty Python skit in which a patient hears on the radio about a crime like that above and the, lo and behold, who enters his hospital room next but a male Filipino nurse who puts something in his IV. What happens next I leave to their excellent scriptwriters.
Humor also works well when we start to take this sort of thing too seriously, as some of the other posters noted. One deficit of our age is the loss of most funny ethnic humor. The only way to hear good Jewish jokes now is to live in Israel. I know because I lived there. "Ask two Jews, get three opinions" is a near-perfect description of Israeli politics.
Getting paid more for the same work and getting promoted over an equally capable female applicant isn't compensation for being called a "male nurse." It's another example of discrimination against females in the workplace. As a fellow nurse, this should bother you.
Considering that women still DOMINATE nursing leadership what do you want me to say? Stop discriminating against yourself?
I'm just trying to survive in a career built by women, for women. Fortunately for me that despite the roadblocks society sets up for men in nursing we still are flourishing.
As I said, could it have been the bias (as in their own preference in provider gender) of the person who wrote the story line?
There is also the aspect of masculine and feminine nouns. Although English does not have them per se, they are present in the Latin that English is based on. This is true of Spanish and other Romance languages. A couple examples in English: Stewardesses, and with most people not knowing the male are stewards, we call them flight attendants.
Actors and actresses. Today, many female film stars call themselves actors. They have taken the masculine form of the word. Do not forget that historically, women did not perform in theater. The female roles were usually played by young men.
In languages where there are masculine and feminine nouns, the words are distinguished by the endings; (Spanish) "o" for masculine, "a" for feminine. When w feminine word refers to a male, we just put the masculine ending.
This is part of the problem that has been a hurdle to the acceptance of gay marriage; a man having a husband and a woman having a wife. Prior to our cultural awakening, I can remember 20 years ago someone asking a same sex couple who I was very good friends with, "who is the husband and who is the wife?"
ixchel, BSN, RN,
Thank you for taking notice of the references.
One final thought; today there are no limits on what anyone can be. We have stay-at-home dads and women in combat. Cher's daughter is a man and Bruce Jenner is becoming a woman....
So how do we deal with those situations? Transwoman versus cis woman? Is that not demeaning? How many people refer to Barack Obama as a "black president?" With social change comes a learning curve. Thankfully we are just starting to come out of the dark ages of human dignity.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I'm not really offended when people call me a male nurse. I'm a nurse, and I'm male. I'm a male in a female-dominated profession. The media doesn't usually portray nurses who are male very well, so I look at it as my job to show the public that I'm competent, and that I am a normal guy, and that nursing is a good profession for males to go into. It's becoming more common, especially in my ICU where about 40% of our staff are male. I never really heard anything about being a male nurse until I did some agency work in an upper middle class area, full of WASP types. To be truthful, the only people who seem to be weirded out by it are the older WASP types. I live in California, which is a pretty liberal place, and I get a lot of young guys asking me about nursing, how much I make, etc. I do my best to encourage them to get into it. Even though 100k isn't rich here in CA, when they hear that I made 106k last year, they're usually pretty interested. I believe that the addition of more males would certainly make the public respect nurses more, and I think that since men are historically known to fight for working rights, working conditions for nurses would improve if more males joined and fought the political fight. I think since that RNs are known to be paid well here in California, a lot of people understand the why about a being a male in nursing. Most people I encounter are more curious as to how I actually like the job. I don't blame them for calling me a male nurse. How could they not with the media representation that we get? It's my job to educate them on my roll and show the public that being a competent RN isn't specific to gender. I'm an educated and intelligent professional. I am not a handmaiden, and I am not your waiter.
Wow -- how politically uncorrect and all. As an "older WASP type," I'm offended.
Norma Rae was female. Just sayin'.
I'll educate the public on my role as a nurse, you just go right ahead educating people on your "roll."
As I said, could it have been the bias (as in their own preference in provider gender) of the person who wrote the story line?
There is also the aspect of masculine and feminine nouns. Although English does not have them per se, they are present in the Latin that English is based on. This is true of Spanish and other Romance languages. A couple examples in English: Stewardesses, and with most people not knowing the male are stewards, we call them flight attendants.
Well, you know, I've never walked into a patient's room and said "I'm PsychGuy, one of the nurses here." Instead it's always been "I'm PsychGuy one of the RNs here. I'll be helping out with your treatment." Most of my RN encounters with patients were of brevity, and it's not in my matrix to give the "Hi. I'm PsychGuy. I'll be your nurse today. Let me know if I can get you anything at all." One of the reasons I identified the way I did was to A, let them know that I wasn't "their" nurse because I worked for the organization and carried a multi-patient load, and, B, curtail any fetching and errand running, i.e. "could you bring me some juice" or "will you get my phone out of my purse laying over there?" Nope. Not a fetcher.
I try not to be too sensitive about stuff like this, but it is discouraging that even today people sometimes feel they have to preface the word "nurse" with the word "male," when their nurse happens to be a man. It is discouraging to see a supposedly progressive news organization like Yahoo! continuing to "otherize" us males by using such verbiage:
It reminds me of when I was telling my friends and family I was going to nursing school. I remember how my pastor told me, "Do you really want to spend your life being a male nurse?" To which I replied, "No, I want to spend my life being a nurse."
Seriously? What if people called someone a "female doctor" or a "female lawyer?" This is silly.
I remember way back in clinicals at the VA a male veteran asked me if I was gay. I said no, I was married to a woman, etc. He asked to see a picture of her. I obliged. He said okay, you can touch me. Afterwards I felt embarrassed for myself. I should not have to defend my profession or throw my gay colleagues under the bus like that.
I know, flame me or say these are "microaggressions." Maybe you are right. But it is not fair either to our male or female colleagues.
I worked nearly 30 years ago with a really good psych nurse of the male persuasion, when that was much more of a novelty than it is now. When he got the inevitable "Oh, are you a male nurse?" questions, his standard response was, "No, I take care of females, too." :)
Just found this thread . . .I like that elk park.
The appropriate term is Murse.
Like fingernails on a chalkboard to me . . ..
I'm not a fan of the "murse" joke either. Not because I find it offensive, the joke is just really, really stale at this point. In a "gee, I've never heard *that* one before" sort of way.
Exactly.
A new family member (30 years old - don't want to "out" this person) said it to me when talking about a job she got at a LTC as a receptionist. She said it like "Hey, I'm part of the club of medical folks now, lol" . . . .made me cringe. When I mentioned that the term "m u r s e" was really not kosher boy did I get a "I know more than you do" answer.
(Funny, trying to type the word m u r s e up there and auto-correct kept fixing it to nurse!).
MrChicagoRN, you need to get your terminology straight. Men don't carry purses. They carry "messenger bags." (They also don't tuck in their T shirts, as depicted in that picture, if they have any fashion sense.)
What do they call themselves? Anything they like. I can see why it would be annoying to a man to be referred to as a "male nurse"---about as annoying as it is to women to be referred to as "women doctors," "women drivers," or "women politicians." (Or, worse, as secretaries and receptionists when in fact they're executives.)
It will change as more and more men enter the nursing profession. It's changing now, thanks to those of you who are currently working as nurses.
I have never heard a nurse describe himself as either a male nurse, nor a murse.
A murse is a male's purse.
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Yes yes! Man-purse=murse. Now, a male nurse carrying a murse through the hospital may end up getting some MRSA on his murse. Nurses should always leave their purses and murses in their locker.
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Mavrick, BSN, RN
1,578 Posts
This is my role model, complete with X-Ray Clipboard. And, YES, I do have one.
Male Nurse
Action Figure
Physicians prescribe, Nurses Provide (says the package)