Male Call
With a severe nursing shortage gripping the country, the profession is looking for a few good men. Recruitment efforts seek to prove that nursing is a great job for women and men.

By Mark Cantrell
December 13, 2004

From Florence Nightingale on, the nursing profession has long been considered a largely female pursuit. For the most part, the so-called “glass ceiling” phenomenon that kept many women out of corporate boardrooms and executive suites has bypassed the nursing profession. But now a different segment of the public — those with a Y chromosome — finds itself running into a number of barriers to a nursing career.

In many cases, those barriers are sociological. Although more men than ever are entering the profession — the total has jumped from 57,000 in 1983 to 164,000 in 2002, according to a July 11, 2003, USA Today article — men still represent just a fraction of the total number of nurses in the U.S. According to the American Journal of Nursing, men made up just 5.9% of the nursing population in 2003. The reasons are varied, but chief among them is a simple misconception among many: that nursing is a job best suited for women.

Can’t ignore men any longer

In fact, men are just as capable of being caring, supportive, and empathetic. However, most recruitment efforts have been tailored for the female demographic, reinforcing old stereotypes and bypassing half the potential nursing employment pool. But today, with the current widespread nursing shortage, the nation can no longer afford that approach. Fortunately, many recent efforts to recruit men into the profession are now showing promising results. The key has proven to be education.

“There are other career opportunities competing with nursing, which partially explains the low numbers,” says Molly Nance, senior director of communication and education for the Nebraska Hospital Association. “But the main reason is a lack of awareness.”That’s why the association decided to publish a calendar that features 12 men from various nursing specialties, demonstrating the wide range of possibilities inherent in the profession.

And in case you were wondering, it’s not a beefcake production. “This is not men in their Speedos,” Nance confirms, “probably to some peoples’ disappointment. We wanted to dispel the stereotypes and promote the variety of positions available in the nursing field. We also wanted to accentuate that this is a pretty serious job. You need to be bright, strong, and committed to the field, and the calendar project seemed to be a really great catalyst to get that message across.”

To that end, the calendar features two shots of each nurse, one in nursing attire — which for nurse managers, for instance, is a business suit — and the other in whatever he wears off duty. “One gentleman is shown in a T-shirt and running shorts, pushing a baby stroller,” Nance says. “Another is wearing camouflage and holding an archery bow. Another guy is sitting on a sawhorse with his tools, doing carpentry work.”

The message is that men will find just as much challenge in nursing as in any other profession; they’ll also get the added benefit of knowing they’re making a difference. Joel Hansen, RN, BSN, a critical care nurse at Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha, experiences that feeling firsthand every day. “It just seems like you’re really helping people at a time when they desperately need it,” he says. “You can just see the look on their faces when you’ve done something to make them feel better — both the patient and the family. Every night when you go to work, you’re doing something positive for the patients and their families, and that’s a great feeling.”

Hansen, who has been a nurse for 11 years, didn’t have to be recruited into the profession because he was exposed to nursing at home. “My wife has been a nurse for 20 years,” he explains. “She was my live-in tutor.” But for men who have little or no contact with nursing aside from the occasional hospital stay, many concerted efforts are now underway nationwide to advertise the advantages of a nursing career to the male population.

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.