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Herrera has spoken to students and Hispanic groups about nursing, and doesn't believe the profession requires much selling. "All the elements are there for a good career, whether you're a man or a woman," he said. "If you present all the facts, it will shine through."

But Burton argues that previous campaigns haven't appealed to men enough to overcome an ingrained public perception that men in nursing must be somehow feminine. Even the J&J campaign, which she considers gender neutral, was not enough to overcome that image, she said. When junior high and high school students see the poster of nine seriously macho men hanging on the door of a counselor's office, their first comment is, " 'They can't be nurses,' " she said. "But they are. And they'll come to your school to prove it."

Burton said she has heard objections to the "Man Enough" campaign from some who think it undermines what they see as the feminist element of nursing, and some who think it's unfair that a man would be accepted into a competitive nursing program over a woman with equal or greater qualifications. The last objection concerns her the most, she said, because she doesn't want anyone to feel excluded from nursing.

No single approach or group of people is going to solve the nursing shortage, said Richard Brock, MA, RN, director of medical/surgical nursing at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He welcomes a variety of recruitment methods aimed at a variety of people.

"When you're trying to get people's attention, you can't hold back," he said. What's important, he said, is getting good people-men and women-into the field.

Career of choice

A few years ago, Brock interviewed 100 men about why they became nurses. He received many interesting answers. Rock musicians said they wanted a steady job between gigs. One man said he decided to become a nurse so he could meet women. Brock himself, a former teacher, went into nursing thinking it would be his summer job.

But those reasons faded after they became nurses. "What kept people in was that they got so fascinated" with their work, he said. "They cared about their colleagues, they cared about their patients. It takes a really uncommitted person not to get sucked up into it."

Cormac O'Sullivan, MSN, CRNA, never envisioned going into nursing, even though his brother and sister did. He describes himself as a hammer-and-saw kind of guy. His father was a maintenance man, and O'Sullivan gravitated to fixing athletic fields and working at a sewage plant over hospital work. He considered becoming an architect or an engineer. But when he got to college, he realized he wanted a degree that would give him a meaningful, well-paying job right out of school. Nursing fit that bill.

He spent about eight years working in Level One trauma centers around the country. He loved the fast pace, the technology, the excitement. But eventually the intensity of inner-city emergency rooms began to get to him. He and his wife wanted to move to a small town to raise their children.

"I coded too many patients," he said. "I'd seen too many people die and they just kept coming. I started thinking about getting into advanced practice nursing."

O'Sullivan went back to the University of Iowa and became a nurse anesthetist. He works as a staff nurse anesthetist at University of Iowa Health Care and is the associate director for the university's nurse anesthetist program. He said he derives great pleasure when he wakes patients after surgery who often can't believe the ordeal is over, when he watches them walk out the door with their families. He also participates in difficult surgeries that provide the excitement he loved so much in emergency care.

"Nursing has been a wonderful career for me," O'Sullivan wrote in an e-mail explaining why he chose the profession. "I have been challenged at many different levels and been able to constantly grow, expand and advance, while maintaining patient contact, which I greatly enjoy."

Long way to go

But he has not seen much change in the profession from the days when he was the only man in a class of 100 women, he said. Salaries and respect for nurses have not increased much. Hospital administrators still tend to think, "a nurse is a nurse," without acknowledging the specialization and skill required for the job, he said.

"It might be more socially acceptable" for a man to be a nurse now, he said. That and the changing economy may bring more men into nursing.

Keeping them, however, is another story.