Courtesy of University of Nebraska
Medical Center College of Nursing
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| The
number of men in nursing is expected to continue
to rise, as nursing jobs remain plentiful in an
unstable economy. Mike Leach (right), a University
of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing student,
trains for worklife on the nursing floor. |
At the most recent American Nurses Association annual
convention, Gene Tranbarger, Ed.D., RN, saw signs that
times might finally be changing for men in nursing:
They were on the bathroom doors.
Tranbarger, president of the American Assembly for
Men in Nursing, has attended ANA conventions since the
late 1950s. "One of the first actions was to declare
all the bathrooms female," he said-a common practice
at conventions of any group where most members are women.
Men had to go to their hotel rooms or into another building
to use the facilities, he said.
This year, he saw signs on every men's room door reading,
"Ladies, out of consideration for our male colleagues,
please do not use this room."
It seems like a little thing, Tranbarger said, but
he sees it as a tremendous change from even two or three
years ago. The image of nursing as an exclusively women's
domain finally may be going the way of crisp white uniforms
and hats. "I think more and more men are being
welcomed into the profession and are being sought out,"
Tranbarger said.
Driven by the nursing shortage, nursing schools and
hospitals are making a concerted effort to woo a previously
untapped base of men, as well as trying to change the
image of nursing as a women's profession. Campaigns
with slogans like "Looking for a Few Good Men"
and "Are You Man Enough to be a Nurse?" have
attracted national media attention, with stories in
The New York Times and the Associated Press.
According to the March 2000 National Sample Survey
of Registered Nurses, 146,902-or 5.4 percent-of the
estimated 2.7 million RNs in the United States were
men. More recent figures from the U.S. Department of
Labor show numbers as high as nearly 7 percent, up from
less than 3 percent in 1980. The number of men going
into nursing is expected to continue to increase, as
nursing jobs remain plentiful in an unstable economy.
But, as some men point out, recruitment is not enough.
To successfully bring in and keep men in nursing, they
say, the profession needs to examine its own attitudes
about why men have been excluded in the past and work
to eliminate factors that might be keeping them away
or making them drop out now.
The last time Tranbarger remembers so much publicity
about men in nursing was in the '50s, when he and other
men were pioneering the male movement into a profession
that had been almost exclusively female since the beginning
of the 20th century. "Then, we were like Siamese
twins," he said. "We were an oddity."
No longer. Nursing schools are changing the colors
and photos on their brochures, eliminating the pastel
pinks and lavenders and the pictures of smiling young
women. Recruiters for schools and hospitals are placing
ads in sports magazines and at sporting events.
A Harley rider, a black belt, a snowboarder and a combat
medic are among the nine nurses staring toughly from
billboards and buses under the headline, "Are You
Man Enough … to be a Nurse?" The poster, which
has been distributed to middle and high schools throughout
Oregon, is part of a recruitment campaign by the Oregon
Center for Nursing, a nonprofit organization dedicated
to solving the nursing shortage.
The "Man Enough" campaign touched a national
nerve when it was unveiled last fall, said Deborah Burton,
Ph.D., RN, executive director of the Oregon Center for
Nursing in Portland. She recently has sold the rights
to the poster to two corporations, one in Louisiana
and one in Southern California, that plan to use it
to recruit men into nursing in those areas.
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