Nursing school and employment advertisements are finding their ways to local sports pages in a nationwide attempt to attract men to the field. With the baby boomer generation aging into the coming decades, the Bush administration estimates a 300 percent increase in nurses is crucial to the care of America’s aging population within the next 50 years. According to the Associated Press, numbers will have to soar from two million current nursing employees to at least six million by 2050.
In 2000, surveys assessed the number of males in nursing at just 5.4 percent, a number appreciably augmented from 2.7 percent in 1980. And if you’ve ever seen “Meet the Parents”, you understand why. Male nurses are, for some reason, looked upon unfavorably.
In an Associated Press article, Michael Brakel, secretary-treasurer of the National Student Nurses’ Association and a senior in Hawaii Pacific University’s nursing program said: “It is a field that is defined by gender for most people.” Yet he goes on to disqualify gender “the moment any man steps onto a floor to take care of a sick child or someone who is dying.”
And he couldn’t be more right; what does the gender of someone caring for a sick person matter anyway? As I fill out medical school and scholarship applications, one phrase keeps rearing its head in a number of forms: “Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.”
Everyone should be encouraged to apply – to do their best, take a chance and follow their dreams.
But it’s not that easy. For Jonathan Levenson, an impending graduate of Cleveland State University’s nursing program, coping with the gender bias was more than just mental – he had no locker room during his obstetrical nursing rotation.
But the surveys are in again and nursing advertisement programs geared toward men are paying off. The National League for Nursing and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported men are embodying rising numbers in nursing programs: 16.1 percent of students working toward two year associate degrees and 8.3 percent of students earning college degree nursing programs from four year institutions.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing accredits the rise in part to the new marketing programs, like the one Johnson and Johnson implemented. Last year the corporation ran ads highlighting men in nearly equal proportion to women in nursing positions.
The AACN is urging nursing institutions to accentuate emergency room nursing and its “tough image,” and to follow the lead of schools like the Oregon Center for Nursing and the University of Iowa in conspicuously displaying men in nursing roles on the Internet and in promotional literature.
Louisiana is one of more than 30 states trying to tackle a shortage of nurses. Our economy, our parents and the well-being of our population cannot survive if the gender bias continues to deter men from entering the field of nursing. Likewise, gender and race biases need to be alleviated so men and women of all races can enter medical, administrative and government fields with confidence. The welfare of our populations depends on it.