‘Forget About the Stigma’: Male Nurses Explain Why Nursing Is a Job of the Future for Men
“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.
“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
“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.”
“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
“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.”
Source: New York Times
