Should men be school nurses? Have you ever heard of any?

noreenl · Jul 12, 2011

I am an agency clinical nursing supervisor for NYC schools. I hire male and female RNs as long as their qualifications and skills are up to par and they pass NYC fingerprinting. They spend a full day with me for inservice and if i get any feelings that they are not suitable for schoolnursing I simply don't use them and explain to each individually why. As for assignments, I ask if ther is a female catheterization and that is the only time I am not allowed to send a male nurse. i have 5 male nurses on my staff currently and i fully support every one of them!!!!

mmm333, LVN · Jul 13, 2011

I worked as a male school nurse. The kids were crying on my last day at work. They signed cards thanking me with nice little words. The teachers and parents told me what a positive role model and leader I had been for those kids. The person before and also after me were males. Therefore I would find it a little goofy for someone to surmise or suggest from afar that males shouldn't or can't be school nurses... because I assure you that males can make great school nurses, just as males can make great teachers. The cath thing might require outside resources or an agency nurse, or supervision. Male doctors perform pap smears and vag exams all over the place, so enough already people, what century are you living in? :bugeyes:

KrystinaRN · Jul 13, 2011

Yes, I think men should feel welcome to the specialty of school nursing if they want, and yes I know one. Let me just say- I truly feel for men in nursing who have to deal with undeserved discrimination, shame, and embarrasment based soley on their sex. I have witnessed it many times and it has shaped my views on this matter. I understand why a parent might feel uncomfortable with the thought of a male catheterizing their young daughter. However, do you think they'd have a problem with him doing that if he were a doctor? probably not. my point is that nurses are professionals and should be treated as such. Anyway, it is illegal for any employer to discriminate on the basis of gender so all you men out there who want to be school nurses- I say go for it! Don't feel like you can't do peds, ob, or school nursing just because you are a man.

mmm333, LVN · Jul 14, 2011

Thanks for your interesting thoughts, folks. Just thought I'd add the following to the discussion:

Potential mistakes in reasoning within this discussion:

False dilemma: A False Dilemma is a fallacy in which a person uses the following pattern of "reasoning": Either claim X (male school nurses can never avoid problems at work) is true or claim Y (there is never a problem with being a male school nurse) is true (when X and Y could both be false). Claim Y is false. Therefore claim X is true. Or vice versa.

Hasty generalization: People often commit Hasty Generalizations because of bias or prejudice. For example, someone who is a sexist might conclude that all women are unfit to fly jet fighters because one woman crashed one. People also commonly commit Hasty Generalizations because of laziness or sloppiness (though it would of course be a hasty generalization to say that because this "has been" the case in some instances, that it is the case in "all instances"!). It is very easy to simply leap to a conclusion and much harder to gather an adequate sample and draw a justified conclusion. Thus, avoiding this fallacy requires minimizing the influence of bias and taking care to select information from a sample that is large enough from among the pool of real subjects (in this case actively practicing male school nurses or their managers).

The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This "argument" has the following form:

Slippery Slope: Event X (male school nurses or doctors getting stuck in uncomfortable and unresolvable situations with patients or families) has occurred in the past (or will or might occur). - Therefore event Y (failure) will inevitably happen in the future.

Local culture/population: Another thing to consider is that the US is a huge country with 50 states and metropolitan versus rural, conservative versus progressive, east versus west, south versus north, versus interior, with many different cultural and regional differences as well as many new and old immigrant communities within each. Within this patchwork there are surprisingly different social mores and attitudes toward different things. So the assumption that what is OK in California/ San Francisco should be OK in Tanner's Pond, Alabama or Saudi Arabia for that matter could also be challenged. To be fair, the OP could be from a place where it is in fact inappropriate. Or not.

guiltysins · Jul 15, 2011

Me personally I don't see how a male school nurse would be any different from a male doctor or a male nurse in a hospital? If there were issues with comfort all you'd have to do is ask if there were some arrangement where a female staff member could be present.

It just seems like such a double standard to me. Same thing with when people see male nurses in L&D yet what walks in the door? A MALE obstetrician, odd world.

bergren · Jul 23, 2011

" The only thing I imagine would be a bit odd is to have a male nurse midwife in OB."

My OB nurse faculty in nursing school in the 70s was a male nurse midwife. He was great.

xiongav · Aug 4, 2011

I thought we were working towards a more, equal-opportunity, nation? That goes for sex, gender, race, etc. :confused:

NurseLoveJoy88, ASN, RN · Aug 4, 2011

I know of a school male nurse.

Purple_Scrubs, BSN, RN · Aug 17, 2011

i've been on vaca from nursing and only just saw this post. my responses are in red.

i certainly do see your point. perhaps i'm speaking still as a retired picu lpn vs a school nurse and i almost always do high school...elementary school isn't my thing at all.
playing devil's advocate however...
would you feel differently about a male doctor? yes, but only because in most cases the parent is present when a doctor examines a child, and few children see their doctor on a daily basis. in the case i described, the student is being cath'ed several times a day be the school nurse. if it were a situation where a doctor was doing an intimate procedure without the parent being present, and the child was upset by this, i would try to accomodate the child's anxiety and request parental presence or a same sex provider (as the nurse in this scenerio i would be acting as patient advocate by requesting this).
the wording you used left me a bit puzzeled when you said"an adult male". is the alternative a male who is not yet an adult? the wording left me feel like you were inferring that this male nurse might be up to no good. i did not mean to insinuate any wrongdoing on the part of the male nurse at all. i was looking it from the perspective of the child. to a seven year old girl, going into the bathroom with an adult male is likely to bring on a high level of anxiety.
ideally, i would want the parents and child to form a trusting relationship with the male nurse. i think its important to teach our children from a young age that doctors and nurses can be men or women and it should not matter. i suppose if that wasn't okay with them or the child, then we could talk about other arrangements. the one male school nurse i work with is excellent. once he called me into listen to a girl who had sexual questions and she said "no...i'm too embarassed to say it in front of her". it was because she didn't know me and she had a trusting relationship with him. i also still wear my nursing cap and white dress, so i think i scared her a bit.
i responded "a nurse is a nurse" because back in the old days (1950s-1960s) nurses didn't cath male patients. male orderlies were trained to do that or the docs did it (at that time, all men). this was a catholic hospital where i did med/surg before the icu was even invented. the hospital made it seem that male patients might get some cheap thrill if a women cathed them. however, male doctors did everything to women. looking back i think "how silly" about so many things we did back then. i remember standing up when the doctor walked in, writing his orders for him like a secretary when they rounded, even making coffee. i never liked it one little bit.
perhaps i'm also speaking as a feminist and believer in non traditional gender roles and am still a rebel from my past. my political views are right on target with yours, from the sounds of it i just feel strongly that with such an intimate procedure that has to be done several times per day, the comfort of the child should be first priority. for the students that i cath, their own fathers do not even handle that cathing at home. to expect a young child to adjust to our expectations of "equal rights" is asking too much. they are already dealing with the emotional issues that come with having a physical problem that causes the need to cath. they know they are different from the other kids, and they may already feel self conscious about it. shouldn't we do anything we can to lessen their anxiety?
i never (and hope i did not inadventantly insinuate) said that males cannot or should not be school nurses, in fact i believe the opposite. i wish we had more guys on the force! but i think this is a very real scenerio that must be considered and worked through in order to make sure the child's feelings are the priority. we are always told that the patient should come first, before the nurse's own agenda. i think by asking a child to have an intimate procedure performed by someone she is uncomfortable with, just for the sake of "equal rights", we would be putting the nurse ahead of the patient.
if there were a child who did not feel embarassed or stressed at all by having a male perform the procedure (perhaps a lower level of awareness than the students i deal with...both of mine are fully on target socially and emotionally), then it would not be an issue.
on the other hand, if there were a student who did not feel comfortable with a female nurse cathing them, i would not force them into it either. i would work with the parents and my administration to work out something that causes the student the very least amount of stress possible.
we cannot expect a chid to understand equal rights for same sex providers. we cannot expect them to be comfortable with an opposite sex provider for very intimate proceudres, especially when the parent is not there to comfort and reassure them. we socialize children to be modest, and rightly so. we have to advocate for the children and make sure that we are addressing their emotional needs as well as the physical ones when we develop their plan of care. if that means juggling an assignment here and there, so be it.
in the end, however, you are right. it was what our parents and children are the most comfortable with, even if we as professionals feel differently.
don't want to start an arguement or have bad blood with you....i enjoy reading your many thoughtful posts on school nursing and respect your thoughts. thanks! :) no hard feelings at all. i appreciate the opportunity to clarify my thoughts in my prior posts.
best to you,
mrs h.