In our hyper-masculine society, men are often thought of as unqualified to be nurses.
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On a crisp, September night in an ER room, the warm and caring affection of the male nurse made all the difference in the world to a 15 year old boy.
At 15 years old, gender imbalances in the workplace were far from my mind. At the time, I didn’t give it a second thought, or find it unusual, that the nurse was a man. What was important was that he provided the care, comfort and reassurance I needed during a traumatic event.
How often do we see men in the role of caregivers, especially in the nursing field. Not very often, right?
In this particular profession, females overwhelmingly outnumber males. Men make up fewer than 10% of the nursing workforce according to a 2011 U.S Census Bureau study. On the rare occasion that I’ve made a trip to the hospital, or to see a doctor, I can only recall one experience with a male nurse.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I was involved in a biking accident that landed me a trip to the ER. The neighbor kid and I were double riding a bike down a small, steep gravel road that led to both of our houses. Probably not the smartest thing to do, especially without helmets.
As we sped down the hill for the third or fourth time, we hit a large rock that was embedded in the road as we attempted to make the sharp 90-degree corner at the bottom. We lost control and ended up crashing the bike into a skid, just narrowly missing a patch of blackberry bushes, stinging nettles, and fence posts off to the side.
The neighbor boy faired pretty well. He ended up with a couple of scrapes and bruises. I, on the other hand, was not so lucky. At first, I appeared to only have suffered a badly scrapped knee and arm. However, upon closer inspection in the bathroom mirror, I noticed a large chunk of flesh missing from my left arm near the elbow. This explained why there was so much blood drizzling down my arm and onto the white porcelain sink and white tiled floors. This was an injury I couldn’t just slap a bandage on. I clearly needed stitches.
My dad and I quickly dashed out of the house to the nearest hospital some 20 miles away. We forgot to leave a note for my mom, who would later come home from work to find a trail of blood throughout the house and lead her to a pile of dirty and bloody clothes. My poor mother! Eventually, my dad called her from the hospital.
Several hours after arriving to the emergency room, I finally got to see a doctor.
The doctor ended up being ill-tempered. His bedside manners were terrible he told me to “suck it up” as he scrapped the dirt and rocks out of the wound before sewing it back up.
At one point during the ordeal, I began to really freak out. A marble-sized rock had lodged itself inside my arm. As the doctor worked to get it out, I could hear and feel the rock scrape against the bone. It was a painful process to say the least. Where was a shot of morphine when I needed one?
The pain relief finally came, but not in a shot of morphine. The relief came from a soothing hand on my shoulder, the nurse. The male nurse. In stark contrast to that of the doctor’s, the nurse’s personality was friendly. He had a genuine, caring disposition about him. He placed his hand on my uninjured arm gently squeezing it in reassurance as I cried out profanities in pain. He talked softly in my ear saying that “everything was going to be okay. It will all be over soon.”
After the doctor stitched up my arm with some 40+ stitches, he left the nurse to finish taking care of my injured knee which luckily, only needed a good cleaning and a bandage.
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I think one of the main reasons this incident stands out so much more clearly, compared to other trips to a hospital, is because the nurse was male. Up until that point, I don’t recall having experienced the more gentle, caring side of another man before. Most of the men I had encountered in life up to that point embodied the stereotypical “masculine traits” of dominance, strength, and aggression. This male nurse stuck out in a profession dominated by women and showed me another side to masculinity: masculinity espoused in compassion and nurturing. He was one of my first encounters to this more enlightened masculinity which I wouldn’t recognize, or learn about until, many years later.
In 1970, only 3% of the nursing population were men. Over the decades, the gap has been slowly closing, albeit at a snails pace. In some places however, it seems to have closed quite a bit. My sister, who is respiratory therapist at a hospital in Mason City, Iowa says the ratio of male to female nurses is about equal.
In our hyper-masculine society, males are often thought of as unqualified to be nurses. This may be due to the caring side of nursing where a nurse espouses the traits of nurturer and gentleness, which are often seen as feminine, and unmanly.
My male nurse, and many others like him, are breaking down these prevailing gender norms and show that a man can be just as qualified and fit to preform the duties of a nurse.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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I’m not concerned about males “taking over” or infringing on a female bastion like Nursing. As am over-60 years of age female, I’m just not used to males in that role. I don’t recall ever seeing or having a male nurse until the last 10 years or so. When I had a hysterectomy at age 51 I awoke to find what seemed like a 12 year old boy at my bedside telling me that he was going to hook me up to an ECG and remove and replace my urinary catheter. I asked him to leave my room and then… Read more »
It’s not just gender norms in society, Male nurses have faced a lot of discrimination within the nursing system. That shouldn’t be over looked. It isn’t just a societal bias keeping men from nursing. http://www.academia.edu/4395973/Gender_Discrimination_and_Nursing_%CE%91_Literature_Review There was a survey done in the early 2000s that found that 90% or so of nurses witnessed anti-male comments from faculty in nursing school. I’ll see if I can retrieve the link. I might have it in my archives, but it’s no longer easy to locate as I suspect that the information is being buried. Possibly because nursing schools had taken steps to fix… Read more »
If women can be employed as CEOs, lawyers, bankers, police officers, doctors, etc., then men can be nurses and in other roles that are dominated by women. And yes, DJ, when you look at corpsmen and medics, they are overwhelming men and they have done things to save their comrades by using medical innovative techniques on their own initiatives that they could not use in civilian life unless they were doctors or nurses. The problem is that you still have a lot of women in nursing who don’t want men in their field. Ironic how the oppress becomes the oppressors.… Read more »
We’ve taken great opportunity to advance women in formerly male dominated fields, but what have we done within the realm of affirmative action, affirmative encouragement for men in formerly female dominated fields? Crickets. We see it in everything from profession, to marriage, to dating, and on down the line. We claim to want men out of the box, but we continually stuff them right back in there when our insecurities, sexism take hold. Why? Because while we at once try to undo what we believe to be the fallacy of masculinity when it benefits us, we pound into guys that… Read more »
Too true. Why? Because while we at once try to undo what we believe to be the fallacy of masculinity when it benefits us, we pound into guys that threat to their masculinity when we see it as threatening to us (Men should ask women out, not the other way around). This is how you end up with encouraging men to not think they have to be the provider when its to get us to realize that women can and should be CEOs but as soon as we try to say men can take on lower paying jobs is back… Read more »