Comments on: 3 male nurse myths

By: MarkEDD

MarkEDD — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:07:25 +0000

Great article. I own my own Long Term Care facility and pride myself in having one of the more diverse staffs in the industry especially when it comes to Nursing Staffing. People are amazed at the perfect balance and most importantly longevity I have in my facility. I’ve been a nurse over 14 years and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. When I opened my own place? I took the ugly and the bad as examples of what not to do. Diversification of staff I notice (which included a lot of male nurses in the nursing end) I noticed was the good. Today I enjoy a consistent 5 star rating at my facility, zero turnover, etc. Male nurses make a difference. In fact where we are nobody seems much to care that 40% of my nursing staff are male. From C.N.A.s to L.V.N.s, two Male Nurse Practitioners and 4 MSN Male Nurse Supervisors compliment the Female Nurses I have with equal training or close to equivalent training as well. It’s all about keeping an open mind, interviewing well in phases and doing thorough research on that nurse from the day they stepped into the field to time they apply with us. Male Nurses make a huge difference! Keep up the great work!

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:46:10 +0000

To all of those who “think” that men cannot/should not be nurses, a little history lesson. Nurses were always men before the time of Florence Nightingale. The profession was thought to be “unseemly for ladies to perform. When my now 23 year old son was in 2nd grade the teacher asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up? My son answered, “I want to be a nurse.” Everybody including the teacher laughed, and she said to him, “boys can’t be nurses.” He was devastated, and was in tears when he told us. At the Parent/Teacher conference I informed his teacher that not only was his mother was a nurse, but so was I. You shoulda seen her face…priceless!

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:39:16 +0000

LOL, I believe many (not most and not obviously) nurses could hack med school… but who would willingly put themselves through that after seeing what those poor med students and residents go through… almost reminds me of nursing school. (kidding!)

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:13:32 +0000

…

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:10:26 +0000

Don’t propagate the same kind of gender stereotypes and sexism the feminist movement fought against. That kind of ignorance has no place in society. Anyone can be anything regardless of gender, race, or religion. Welcome to the 21st century… and I’m a damn good nurse.

By: lethstang

lethstang — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 20:24:27 +0000

Very well written article Jim, you make alot of good points. I hope this article continues the male nursing trend.

However.

“Yes, from a man’s perspective, there are a lot of positive and negative aspects of nursing. One negative aspect is the assumption that we couldn’t hack med school. That’s obviously not the case for most of us..”

Dont be ridiculous.

By: Albert Nigh

Albert Nigh — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:15:06 +0000

I have had experiences as a male nurse. I have been a Navy/Marine hospital corpsman, Airforce medic, civilian hospital orderly and a Veterans hospital phlebotomist. My mom was also a nurse. I have seen some good times and some bad times for example a dying patient dies in your arms while you are making an occupied bed. I also work at the post office because I moved to another state and didn’t have nurses aid certification. I was given the chance to go to school to get my certification at no cost to me ad I couldn’t pass it up because I love the field!

By: Bill

Bill — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 05:17:03 +0000

Whatever… you do not have a clue what it takes to care for anyone! This is the 21st century–the workforce today is NOT in jeapordy because men are taking over “womens” jobs and vise-versa. Move to Anartica–they love your feminist BS there.

I am a male nurse… and damn good one. The fact that I am male does not mean that I am better than my female co-workers. In fact, we all work together in pursuing ONE goal… to provide the BEST possible care for “our” patients. And we do so with a positive attitude. Your attitude, on the other hand, is exactly why people hate hospitals. Your attitude is exactly why I decided to join the profession… you see I a DON and I seek out attitudes like yours, and do away with them. So don’t ever come to my hospital, because I don’t have the room or patience for people like you.

Most of the posts here are from men who are proud to be a “male” nurse… they’re not whining… they’re standing up for themselves. The only person whining in any of these posts is you. GET A LIFE… go be a secretary, but you’ll probably fail at that too.

By: karen

karen — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 00:32:47 +0000

I am a female RN/BSN, and believe me, female nurses can go after any gender. It is very true how nurses eat their young, regardless of “age”. I worked in a unit that was so dysfunctional from the Asst. Nurse Manager on down, and eventually the male nurses emulate their co workers. It was a nightmare, and since I left, I haven’t had an upset stomach or bad dreams since. Years ago, nurses worked together, helped each other willingly, and had fun on the job. What on earth happened? I did like working with males, as most are less dramatic and back biting, and as a pt I was even more surprised to find i liked my male nurses better. (Some forget the smaller details a female would foresee), but actually the males had more empathy. Women can be very mean and destructive to one another, sorry to say. All my life I wanted nothing more than to be a nurse, and loved the job, but hated the working enviornment in the past years, so it left a sour taste in my mouth and had to leave. Miss the work and pt care enormously.

By: NursingWhileMale

NursingWhileMale — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:55:43 +0000

Part of being a nurse should be having pride in our profession.
Part of having pride in our profession should be knowing its history.
Read a little and you will find that nursing was not invented by Nightingale, it was re-invented by her. In actuality both genders were involved in nursing since before it was even called “nursing”. Caring for wounded soldiers wasn’t a new thing that suddenly occurred in the Crimean war… Guess who provided care to the wounded soldiers at the time of the crusades and even earlier treating sick pilgrims… Monks and knights that were ***gasp*** MEN.
Let’s put this whole woman’s profession argument to bed. If anyone needs further convincing allow me to me point you to the orders of the Knights Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights (circa way the heck before certain gender biased people were born, got jaded, and decided that nursing only has room for one gender). Thank you, that is all.