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‘Forget About the
Stigma’: Male Nurses
Explain Why Nursing
Is a Job of the
Future for Men
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and RUTH FREMSON JAN. 4, 2018

100000005573032
“I’m sort of an adrenaline junkie, but it’s also the satisfaction of being able to help people, like when you have someone come in who’s overdosed and you treat them and see them turn around just like that.”

J.R. McLain, 50

Emergency department nurse; former Navy mechanic and truck driver

Jake Creviston, a nurse practitioner, has been repeatedly mistaken for a doctor.

Adam White says the veterans he cares for as a student nurse at the V.A. hospital feel comfortable around him because “I’m a big burly guy with a beard.”

Glenn Fletcher, after being laid off from a lumber mill during the financial crisis, found a new career in nursing. And with it, “a really good feeling putting your head on the pillow realizing you’ve helped other people.”

The experiences of male nurses offer lessons that could help address a problem of our time: how to prepare workers for the fastest-growing jobs, at a time when more than a quarter of adult men are not in the labor force.

Only 13 percent of nurses in the United States are men, but that share has grown steadily since 1960, when the number was 2 percent, according to a working paper published in October by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

“It’s not a flood, but it’s a change,” said Abigail Wozniak, an economist at the University of Notre Dame, who wrote the paper with Elizabeth Munnich, an economist at the University of Louisville. The biggest drivers, they found, were the changing economy and expanding gender roles.

We talked to a dozen male nurses, with various career paths and specialties, working in the Pacific Northwest, where recruitment efforts have focused on bringing men into nursing. Some were drawn to the caregiving, others to the adrenaline of the work. It’s a reliable, well-paying job at a time when that’s hard to come by, they said, but also one they feel proud of.

100000005575394
“When my wife told her grandfather that I graduated from nursing school, he just laughed. But I think there are more men who are less afraid to take on what have traditionally been considered feminine roles.”

John-Flor Sisante, 38

Recent nursing graduate interested in hospice nursing; former musician

100000005573014
100000005573020
“Walk around our hospital and all the call lights have pictures of females on them. I guess it was never thought of at the time that there might be a guy in here some day.”

Glenn Fletcher, 49

Operating room nurse; former lumber mill worker

Women have been entering male-dominated fields for decades, but it’s less common for a predominantly female occupation to have a substantial increase in its share of men. Yet the jobs that are shrinking tend to be male ones, and those that are growing are mostly female.

Nursing is no paragon of gender equality: Even though men are a minority, they are paid more than women. The stigma against men still runs deep, particularly among older patients and in parts of the country with more traditional gender roles, nurses said. (Several said the movie “Meet the Parents,” in which Ben Stiller played a nurse whose girlfriend’s father wasn’t thrilled about his career, didn’t help.)

But for some men, the notion that caregiving jobs are women’s work is outdated. Progressive attitudes about gender roles, as measured by the General Social Survey, were associated with more men who entered nursing, the new paper found.

“This narrative that men can’t provide care in the way that women can is part of that broad cultural narrative that misunderstands what nursing’s about,” said Mr. White, the V.A. hospital student nurse, who is earning his nursing degree at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “We need to talk with young people about caring as a gender-neutral idea, but also as something that’s rooted in skills, in expertise.”

100000005567753
“When we notice that our boys are gifted in math and science and they say, ‘I want to be a doctor when I grow up,’ we could say, ‘That’s great, you could even be a nurse if you wanted to!’ ”

Adam White, 35

Nursing student; former banker

100000005573022
100000005573909
“You’re a caregiver, providing quality, dignified care. It’s not you doing it as a male or a female, but just generally as a caregiver.”

Justin Kuunifaa, 41

Family practice nurse; former in-home caregiver

The researchers also found that economic factors have played a role — a decline in some jobs because of automation, trade and the housing crisis, and a growth in jobs and wages in health care. Nursing is growing much faster than the average occupation, and wages have increased steadily since 1980. The median salary is $68,450, about the same as the median salary for college-educated workers over all.

“A lot of those manufacturing jobs and things of that nature just aren’t there anymore,” said David Baca, an emergency department nurse in Medford, Ore. “We get paid a really livable wage, and I think that is now starting to attract more male nurses.”

100000005573921
“It’s a good profession because it’ll always be there. They’ll always need nurses. It can’t be outsourced, it can’t be automated.”

David Baca, 37

Emergency department nurse; former handyman

100000005573041
100000005573928
“My mother’s a nurse, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to become a nurse until I had a conversation with another man, who used to be an E.M.T. but became a nurse, and something just clicked.”

Peter Stach, 36

In-home palliative care nurse; former server and bartender

The paper used census data about men who were born in the United States and turned 18 between 1973 and 2013. They found that the increase in male nurses was largely uniform across the country, although black and Hispanic men and those in rural areas were less likely to become nurses.

Nursing is a career that both men and women often start later in life, in part because it’s possible to become certified midcareer and without a bachelor’s degree. But as hospitals increasingly require nurses to have a four-year degree, it could become a barrier for men who want to enter the field, the researchers said.

“We learned that workers can take a very long time to settle into occupations, but that is not the traditional path that we think of when we think about training our work force,” Ms. Wozniak said.

Male nurses are more likely than females to have worked as emergency medical technicians, military nurses or lab technicians, and to work in acute care in hospitals rather than primary care clinics. Nearly half of nurse anesthetists, one of the highest-paying nursing jobs, are men.

In interviews, men said they liked the variety of work: Nurses can be bedside caregivers, surgery assistants, educators, technicians or administrators.

100000005573027
“Forget about the stigma. The pay is great, the opportunities are endless and you end up going home every day knowing that you did something very positive for someone else.”

Jorge Gitler, 50

Oncology nurse manager; former business owner

100000005573936
100000005575918
“Men desire to be caring, and you get a chance to have a career that allows you to care for people meaningfully.”

Graham Seaton, 41

Hospital infection prevention and neuro-trauma nurse; former retail and nonprofit worker

Several said they felt an advantage in applying for nursing jobs because men are a minority in the field. Hospitals and patients benefit when nurses more closely reflect the patient population, research shows.

Sometimes patients prefer a nurse of a certain sex, particularly for procedures like inserting a catheter, nurses said, and some men feel more comfortable talking openly with another man.

“I work on this floor with people who just had urology surgery or amputations, and they have told me that when I come in the room and shut the door behind me, they feel more understood and can drop the tough guy attitude,” Mr. White said.

Nursing became a woman’s job because women were seen as natural caregivers, said Patricia D’Antonio, a nursing historian at the University of Pennsylvania. But until the second half of the 19th century, men were assigned nursing jobs that required physical strength and bravery, like caring for patients during a dangerous epidemic. That began to change when Florence Nightingale brought a group of female nurses to the Crimean War in 1854.

Nursing became such a gendered profession that men were barred from serving in the Army Nurse Corps during the two world wars. Not until the 1960s did the nursing field begin trying to better reflect its patients in terms of both gender and race, Ms. D’Antonio said.

100000005573026
100000005573025
“It’s not just a job. You have this sense of purpose, this sense of service, that you’re in this to really help improve people’s lives.”

Jonathan Auld, 44

Clinical nurse leader and nursing Ph.D. student; former elementary school teacher

The Oregon Center for Nursing, a work force development group, began recruiting male and minority prospects to nursing in the early 2000s. It started a marketing campaign — “Are you man enough to be a nurse?” — that spread nationwide. Posters showed male nurses carrying a snowboard or wearing a motorcycle jacket.

“It was just rethinking how we describe the work and focusing on the kind of person it takes to be a great nurse,” said Deborah Burton, who founded the center and is now chief nursing officer at Providence St. Joseph Health, a health care system in the West.

More recently, efforts to recruit male nurses have focused less on gender and more on the rewards of the career, with the slogan, “Do what you love and you’ll love what you do.”

Nurses said they welcomed the change. “I don’t think we’re doing any favors to society by conveying this message that nursing is this super masculine thing,” said Mr. Creviston, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and mental health nursing professor in Portland, Ore. “If your motive is to bring the right men into the field, show how rewarding it is to hold the hand of a dying person.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/04/upshot/male-nurses.html

Do we have male nurses in Nigeria?

HillsBlaze:
SECTIONS
The New York Times
LOG IN SETTINGS
Advertisement

The Upshot
SHARE
‘Forget About the
Stigma’: Male Nurses
Explain Why Nursing
Is a Job of the
Future for Men
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and RUTH FREMSON JAN. 4, 2018

100000005573032
“I’m sort of an adrenaline junkie, but it’s also the satisfaction of being able to help people, like when you have someone come in who’s overdosed and you treat them and see them turn around just like that.”

J.R. McLain, 50

Emergency department nurse; former Navy mechanic and truck driver

Jake Creviston, a nurse practitioner, has been repeatedly mistaken for a doctor.

Adam White says the veterans he cares for as a student nurse at the V.A. hospital feel comfortable around him because “I’m a big burly guy with a beard.”

Glenn Fletcher, after being laid off from a lumber mill during the financial crisis, found a new career in nursing. And with it, “a really good feeling putting your head on the pillow realizing you’ve helped other people.”

The experiences of male nurses offer lessons that could help address a problem of our time: how to prepare workers for the fastest-growing jobs, at a time when more than a quarter of adult men are not in the labor force.

Only 13 percent of nurses in the United States are men, but that share has grown steadily since 1960, when the number was 2 percent, according to a working paper published in October by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

“It’s not a flood, but it’s a change,” said Abigail Wozniak, an economist at the University of Notre Dame, who wrote the paper with Elizabeth Munnich, an economist at the University of Louisville. The biggest drivers, they found, were the changing economy and expanding gender roles.

We talked to a dozen male nurses, with various career paths and specialties, working in the Pacific Northwest, where recruitment efforts have focused on bringing men into nursing. Some were drawn to the caregiving, others to the adrenaline of the work. It’s a reliable, well-paying job at a time when that’s hard to come by, they said, but also one they feel proud of.

100000005575394
“When my wife told her grandfather that I graduated from nursing school, he just laughed. But I think there are more men who are less afraid to take on what have traditionally been considered feminine roles.”

John-Flor Sisante, 38

Recent nursing graduate interested in hospice nursing; former musician

100000005573014
100000005573020
“Walk around our hospital and all the call lights have pictures of females on them. I guess it was never thought of at the time that there might be a guy in here some day.”

Glenn Fletcher, 49

Operating room nurse; former lumber mill worker

Women have been entering male-dominated fields for decades, but it’s less common for a predominantly female occupation to have a substantial increase in its share of men. Yet the jobs that are shrinking tend to be male ones, and those that are growing are mostly female.

Nursing is no paragon of gender equality: Even though men are a minority, they are paid more than women. The stigma against men still runs deep, particularly among older patients and in parts of the country with more traditional gender roles, nurses said. (Several said the movie “Meet the Parents,” in which Ben Stiller played a nurse whose girlfriend’s father wasn’t thrilled about his career, didn’t help.)

But for some men, the notion that caregiving jobs are women’s work is outdated. Progressive attitudes about gender roles, as measured by the General Social Survey, were associated with more men who entered nursing, the new paper found.

“This narrative that men can’t provide care in the way that women can is part of that broad cultural narrative that misunderstands what nursing’s about,” said Mr. White, the V.A. hospital student nurse, who is earning his nursing degree at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “We need to talk with young people about caring as a gender-neutral idea, but also as something that’s rooted in skills, in expertise.”

100000005567753
“When we notice that our boys are gifted in math and science and they say, ‘I want to be a doctor when I grow up,’ we could say, ‘That’s great, you could even be a nurse if you wanted to!’ ”

Adam White, 35

Nursing student; former banker

100000005573022
100000005573909
“You’re a caregiver, providing quality, dignified care. It’s not you doing it as a male or a female, but just generally as a caregiver.”

Justin Kuunifaa, 41

Family practice nurse; former in-home caregiver

The researchers also found that economic factors have played a role — a decline in some jobs because of automation, trade and the housing crisis, and a growth in jobs and wages in health care. Nursing is growing much faster than the average occupation, and wages have increased steadily since 1980. The median salary is $68,450, about the same as the median salary for college-educated workers over all.

“A lot of those manufacturing jobs and things of that nature just aren’t there anymore,” said David Baca, an emergency department nurse in Medford, Ore. “We get paid a really livable wage, and I think that is now starting to attract more male nurses.”

100000005573921
“It’s a good profession because it’ll always be there. They’ll always need nurses. It can’t be outsourced, it can’t be automated.”

David Baca, 37

Emergency department nurse; former handyman

100000005573041
100000005573928
“My mother’s a nurse, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to become a nurse until I had a conversation with another man, who used to be an E.M.T. but became a nurse, and something just clicked.”

Peter Stach, 36

In-home palliative care nurse; former server and bartender

The paper used census data about men who were born in the United States and turned 18 between 1973 and 2013. They found that the increase in male nurses was largely uniform across the country, although black and Hispanic men and those in rural areas were less likely to become nurses.

Nursing is a career that both men and women often start later in life, in part because it’s possible to become certified midcareer and without a bachelor’s degree. But as hospitals increasingly require nurses to have a four-year degree, it could become a barrier for men who want to enter the field, the researchers said.

“We learned that workers can take a very long time to settle into occupations, but that is not the traditional path that we think of when we think about training our work force,” Ms. Wozniak said.

Male nurses are more likely than females to have worked as emergency medical technicians, military nurses or lab technicians, and to work in acute care in hospitals rather than primary care clinics. Nearly half of nurse anesthetists, one of the highest-paying nursing jobs, are men.

In interviews, men said they liked the variety of work: Nurses can be bedside caregivers, surgery assistants, educators, technicians or administrators.

100000005573027
“Forget about the stigma. The pay is great, the opportunities are endless and you end up going home every day knowing that you did something very positive for someone else.”

Jorge Gitler, 50

Oncology nurse manager; former business owner

100000005573936
100000005575918
“Men desire to be caring, and you get a chance to have a career that allows you to care for people meaningfully.”

Graham Seaton, 41

Hospital infection prevention and neuro-trauma nurse; former retail and nonprofit worker

Several said they felt an advantage in applying for nursing jobs because men are a minority in the field. Hospitals and patients benefit when nurses more closely reflect the patient population, research shows.

Sometimes patients prefer a nurse of a certain sex, particularly for procedures like inserting a catheter, nurses said, and some men feel more comfortable talking openly with another man.

“I work on this floor with people who just had urology surgery or amputations, and they have told me that when I come in the room and shut the door behind me, they feel more understood and can drop the tough guy attitude,” Mr. White said.

Nursing became a woman’s job because women were seen as natural caregivers, said Patricia D’Antonio, a nursing historian at the University of Pennsylvania. But until the second half of the 19th century, men were assigned nursing jobs that required physical strength and bravery, like caring for patients during a dangerous epidemic. That began to change when Florence Nightingale brought a group of female nurses to the Crimean War in 1854.

Nursing became such a gendered profession that men were barred from serving in the Army Nurse Corps during the two world wars. Not until the 1960s did the nursing field begin trying to better reflect its patients in terms of both gender and race, Ms. D’Antonio said.

100000005573026
100000005573025
“It’s not just a job. You have this sense of purpose, this sense of service, that you’re in this to really help improve people’s lives.”

Jonathan Auld, 44

Clinical nurse leader and nursing Ph.D. student; former elementary school teacher

The Oregon Center for Nursing, a work force development group, began recruiting male and minority prospects to nursing in the early 2000s. It started a marketing campaign — “Are you man enough to be a nurse?” — that spread nationwide. Posters showed male nurses carrying a snowboard or wearing a motorcycle jacket.

“It was just rethinking how we describe the work and focusing on the kind of person it takes to be a great nurse,” said Deborah Burton, who founded the center and is now chief nursing officer at Providence St. Joseph Health, a health care system in the West.

More recently, efforts to recruit male nurses have focused less on gender and more on the rewards of the career, with the slogan, “Do what you love and you’ll love what you do.”

Nurses said they welcomed the change. “I don’t think we’re doing any favors to society by conveying this message that nursing is this super masculine thing,” said Mr. Creviston, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and mental health nursing professor in Portland, Ore. “If your motive is to bring the right men into the field, show how rewarding it is to hold the hand of a dying person.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/04/upshot/male-nurses.html

As a British Nurse, I endorse this

As a Nigerian nurse, I endorse this

inukwa essay

Unfortunately am lazy to read

What I read up there is centered around nursing as a profession abroad. Can somebody tell us about nursing in Nigeria?.

Lol

Yes forget about the stigma but its not enough to copy and paste something from a western media. Let's bring it down to naija levels.
Just as females have encroached into predominantly male professions, I see nothing wrong in male nursing but from my experience working with a number of male nurses , I have deduced the following:
> A better number of them to not show the care and empathy desired of a nurse.
> To many, its a surefire means to a steady income, and was never their passion ab initio, not even in their dreams.
> Male nurses do not show the same dedication to patient care as females, and have been directly/indirectly responsible for mortality of patients.
> Male nurses would do better in orthopedics, peri-op, emergency nursing etc and not bedside nursing.
In trying to copy from the whites, though I encourage anyone with interest to pursue it, but dudes need to understand the rules of engagement and limits for they have been largely responsible for the proliferation of quack hospitals, esp up north, only to rush patients into the hospital at 2am when patient is already at the gate of heaven.

Summary pls

mrpredictor:
I wont allow a male doctor to operate my wife during child delivery










check out this 99% sure banker odd for today BET9JA games click here to get it

See, when the time comes, do you think you will care about who the doctor is? The time you will be walking up and down the hospital hallway praying in tongues for the successful delivery, will you care about the nurses and doctors?

This shit is too long now , you should know THIS IS NIGERIA

They have the strength to do even hard lifting

If you are a Nurse in Nigeria it's better you seek opportunities outside the country. Some people will say why not stay back and improve the Nigeria health sector, well I will never tell anyone to stay back because even the government doesn't care. The reason am saying this is 1) I know a male nurse working with Ogomosho teaching hospital ,he was sacked last year with so many others because the the state government cannot keep up with payments.
2) I know of a female nurse in Lagos that as being out of school for years and she still managing in a small private hospital hoping she would get something reasonable someday.

Even medical job for naija na man know man

Male nurses are cool. They are more considerate

that shiii is too long... you just copy n paste.. na wa o

I also observed that when female nurses are on duty with the male, they leave all the work for him
There is no Superman in healthcare delivery. Excessive workload is always a recipe for mistakes, some of which could be costly.

EsotericMonk:
I also observed that when female nurses are on duty with the male, they leave all the work for him
There is no Superman in healthcare delivery. Excessive workload is always a recipe for mistakes, some of which could be costly.

And how can they do this? You get your allocated patients, so it's not possible to shelve or dock your responsibilities....

nwabobo:


As a British Nurse, I endorse this

and u had to quote all this ehn . gosh

nony43:
Do we have male nurses in Nigeria?

Yes we do, some of my friends are male nurses

Black sunday,a day i will never forget in my life 10/6/2018..lost two friends to motorcycle accident in two different scenes.

sshyne:
If you are a Nurse in Nigeria it's better you seek opportunities outside the country. Some people will say why not stay back and improve the Nigeria health sector, well I will never tell anyone to stay back because even the government doesn't care. The reason am saying this is 1) I know a male nurse working with Ogomosho teaching hospital ,he was sacked last year with so many others because the the state government cannot keep up with payments.
2) I know of a female nurse in Lagos that as being out of school for years and she still managing in a small private hospital hoping she would get something reasonable someday.

Even medical job for naija na man know man

yes o, it is even getting easier now to gain admission into medical sch than to get place for housemanship, if u know sabi people, u are on ur own.

hmmm

Lol....na so my mumu Nigerian friends de yarb me when I tell them say I be nurse. Make them de laugh while I chop my money jejely

Female patients de enjoy am die when a handsome nurse waltz into their room...

Albert0011:
Black sunday,a day i will never forget in my life 10/6/2018..lost two friends to motorcycle accident in two different scenes.

Sorry bro. May their souls rest in peace.

My condolences.

EsotericMonk:
Yes forget about the stigma but its not enough to copy and paste something from a western media. Let's bring it down to naija levels.
Just as females have encroached into predominantly male professions, I see nothing wrong in male nursing but from my experience working with a number of male nurses , I have deduced the following:
> A better number of them to not show the care and empathy desired of a nurse.
> To many, its a surefire means to a steady income, and was never their passion ab initio, not even in their dreams.
> Male nurses do not show the same dedication to patient care as females, and have been directly/indirectly responsible for mortality of patients.
> Male nurses would do better in orthopedics, peri-op, emergency nursing etc and not bedside nursing.
In trying to copy from the whites, though I encourage anyone with interest to pursue it, but dudes need to understand the rules of engagement and limits for they have been largely responsible for the proliferation of quack hospitals, esp up north, only to rush patients into the hospital at 2am when patient is already at the gate of heaven.

Mr man you can lie ehn, stop spewing out trash in the name of commenting on a post

noble234:

Sorry bro. May their souls rest in peace.
My condolences.

Thanks bro

Summary pls...... I am lazy

All these foolish Nigerian men killing their wives in the US - this is for them ! Typical African mentality - you feel to big to do nursing - it’s a shameful job for a big African man - so you bring your wife to do it so you can chop her nursing salary - there s no shame in spending nurse salary ! If you are chooking eye in nurse money - then go to school and train to be a nurse ! Let’s avoid stories that touch !