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The manhunt is on

Calendars seem to be a favored choice when marketing the nursing profession to men. In addition to Nebraska, several other nursing and hospital associations publish them, including those in Georgia, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. The Oregon Center for Nursing has produced a poster that features nine male nurses and nursing students with the title, “Are you man enough to be a nurse?” The men are of various ages and ethnicities, which highlights the fact that nursing is open to anyone with the drive and dedication to succeed. The posters have been distributed to every health care facility and nursing school in Oregon, but the OCN has also mailed them to middle schools and high schools in the hope that they may affect students’ career choices.

In Greenville, N.C., Pitt County Memorial Hospital/University Health Systems is also reaching out to young men in an effort to dispel stereotypes and educate them about the benefits of a nursing career. After hosting presentations about health care careers, the facility engages male nurses to mentor students who are interested in learning more about the profession.

At the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, nurse recruiters fan out to firehouses, military bases, and ambulance stations, where they tout a nursing career to men who often already have an EMT background. At University of Michigan hospitals, male nurses now account for 10% of the nursing population — nearly twice the national average.

In 2002, Johnson & Johnson began a program, Discover Nursing, that is, in part, designed to recruit more males into nursing. More than half the program’s advertising features men, and about a third of the nurses profiled on its website are male. The program has distributed posters, brochures, and videos to 25,000 high schools and 1,500 nursing schools and organizations across the
country.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Nursing in Omaha has used some imaginative tactics to attract male students. Despite a limited budget, the school has been able to promote its offerings through free ads in minority newspapers and cable television stations. The school also held an open house that was advertised on a marquee at one of Omaha’s busiest intersections at no cost to the facility. When it did place a paid ad in the local newspaper, the school made sure it appeared in the movie section, where people of all genders would see it.

Good care comes first

But are any of these campaigns really making a difference? Nance says few local TV stations or newspapers were interested in her calendar story. “I flooded the Nebraska media with invitations to our calendar signing and sent out who knows how many complimentary calendars, but there was no response from the larger cities,” she says. But then the Associated Press ran a story about the calendar. “The next day I was deluged with phone calls from all over the country,” Nance says, “and all of a sudden Omaha and Lincoln started picking it up.”

Just as pigeonholing people by race is no longer acceptable, nurse recruiters hope to make gender stereotyping a thing of the past. “I think it is changing,” Hansen says. “I’ve personally never experienced any gender bias. As long as our patients are receiving good care, I don’t think they mind if the person giving it is a man or a woman.”

Mark Cantrell is a freelance writer.