Reccomend a gender neutral title to replace "Nurse"!

Nurses General Nursing

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Other professional titles such as mailman or stewardess have been replaced with gender neutral titles like postal worker and flight attendant, and as someone put it before on the forums here the term nurse implies an act that by definition requires having mammaries! what would you reccomend as a gender neutral replacement title?

My wife bought me a license plate that says murse on it when I passed nclex. I thought it was perfect and still do! The irony however is that I do not have a front license plate holder on my car...not that I'm picking on females just my wife's lack of car knowledge!

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
no one who is a&ox3 is going to flame you for that post. :)

but you might want to consider all the other fields that have been traditionally male and now females are in in significant numbers. if you're expecting a call from an engineer, don't you assume it's a male? and how about when two people walk into a patient's room and stand at the foot of the bed, the patient's family naturally assumes that the man is the one who is the doctor and the female must be the nurse...and cut off the doctor who is speaking so that the man can answer their questions? can't imagine the female doctor is pleased with that assumption, but there it is. especially if it's a male-dominated field like orthopedics.

i tend to write s/he when referring to someone online whose gender i do not know. figure it's polite, but then again, it's an extra step not everyone wants to take so the generic "she" or "he" is often seen here.

now, about that heavy lifting, lol....if there's someone nearby who has a better back than mine, i'm gonna ask for the help and don't care if it's a burly man or just a stronger woman! then again my back sucks so a girl scout will do better than me most of the time.

i couldn't have said it better myself. it is what we are and have been for a long time. so it's been historically a female dominated profession but that is changing.

women never tried to change the term doctor to a feminine form when entering the male dominated field. males should not try to change the title to the profession when entering the female dominated field. it is what it is.....get over it. :smokin:

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Agree The nurse name needs togo. I once saw Media from playgirlmagazine posted all over thestaff bathroom in an MICU. Nothing"gender neutral" about that. Who would want to be a male patient on that unit. Imagineif you were a female going to amale gyn and there was Media plastered over the whole wall. Would that be appropriate,Ithink not.

Could you please explain what inappropriate displays of Mediaography in bathrooms has to do with the professional title 'nurse'?

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A doctor is a doctor regardless of gender. An engineer is an engineer, regardless...well, you get the idea.

I think the overall point everyone (ok, almost everyone) has been trying to make is that the term 'nurse' IS gender neutral. While one might think of the word as it relates to breastfeeding a baby, it has also LOOOoonnng been used interchangeably with healing, as in "she nursed her husband back to health".

Clearly the wife did not breastfeed her husband back to health, though who knows how much faster he'd have gotten back on his feet if she did ;)

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Specializes in Neuroscience.
I understand the whole PC gestapo rhetoric can get old, but it also seems like I'm slapped in the face with the feminine label that embodies nurse. That isn't to say that Nurse is bad, I like the name, I enjoy my work, but some of the responses to this question were unnecessarily harsh (even if they were made 3 years ago, maybe things have changed), and brought on a tinge or taste of reverse sexism with the "deal with it" attitude some displayed.

Terms like reverse sexism, racism, whateverism, need to die in a fire. I cannot...

Whine more, people in the majority. UGH.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
Terms like reverse sexism, racism, whateverism, need to die in a fire. I cannot...

Whine more, people in the majority. UGH.

hm... not constructive or coherent, please clarify

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Calling us 'Murses' or 'Male Nurse' leads me to apply the idea elsewhere: 'Female Doctor' 'Female Engineer (Femineer?).'

I feel it's likely to perpetuate stereotypes, like these:

  • The Ladderclimber
  • The Troublemaker
  • The He-Man (this is me, the personal Hoyer lift)
  • The Homosexual

Distinctions are unnecessary, but 'Nurse' is fine.

:twocents:

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Calling us 'Murses' or 'Male Nurse' leads me to apply the idea elsewhere: 'Female Doctor' 'Female Engineer (Femineer?).'

And how insulting a term would it be, 'female doctor', or 'female engineer'? (btw, gmta, I thought of 'femgineer' only after posting, lol....).

I'd think 'male nurse' would be viewed as insulting as well....as you've said.

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