Retaliated Against for Being Male in Nursing Program

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Dear Nurse Beth,

I am/was a nursing student in my final semester. In my last semester I was harassed by a senior instructor, for being a male nursing student. After I reported this instructor to the Dean, I was immediately retaliated against and failed out of every single clinical course, despite passing the lectures. After I resigned for the semester, I was told by the nursing director that I wouldn't be welcomed back, due to poor clinical performance. I am currently in the middle of a legal battle with them, but I still want to be a nurse. After calling around, many other programs want me to restart at the beginning, and I just can't see myself restarting. Is there any advice anyone can offer? On ATI I am scoring at a 90 percent chance of passing the NCLEX, so I am ready to test, I just need a school to endorse me.
Thank you for any advice!

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4 Answers

Specializes in Tele, ICU, Staff Development.

Dear Retaliated Against,

I'm sorry about your experience. You say you resigned in your last semester and then were told you could not return. This makes me wonder what your plan was when you dropped out. 

If the faculty had problems with your performance (real or not), then in a way you made it easy for them when you resigned instead of them kicking you out. Legal battles of this nature can be hard to win, time-consuming, and expensive if you hire an attorney. Right or wrong, you got on their bad side, and in a nursing program, faculty hold the power.

I do not know of a nursing program that allows students to transfer in midway. Students in your situation have to apply to a nursing program and start over, difficult as this may be.

My advice is to accept the reality of the situation and decide whether or not you are willing to start over. Get some distance and perspective from this bad situation to see if there's anything to be learned from it so you can succeed in the future. Find a way to put this behind you and pursue your goal of becoming a nurse.

Then become the best nurse you can be.

You may find this hard to believe now, but sometimes in life, the worst experiences help us grow stronger. Best wishes to you,

Nurse Beth 

Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

This question does not make sense and I suspect there may be important omissions by the OP. The wording  "I was retaliated against for being a male nursing student." perhaps this is just a poor choice of words but implies that he did something first and was the victim of retaliation.

According to Webster's International Dictionary the word Retaliate is a intransitive verb which means to return an aggressive action with a similar or equal reaction.   

Specializes in NICU.

Using the word "retaliated" is different than using the word "discriminated". There seems to be more to the story than what the OP has posted. To quote Dr. Phil "No matter how flat you make a pancake, it still has two sides".

 

To retaliate 'for being male' doesn't seem to ring true. Being on time and participating seems to hold more weight than making mistakes. Were any of these an issue for the OP?

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