Careers in government nursing are as varied as nursing careers in the private sector. However, when many nurses hear “government nursing,” they may assume that means working for a veterans hospital. But the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) is only one of many government agencies where skilled nurses who want to work for the government can build their careers.
In fact, there are a variety of government agencies and positions where nurses can put their skills to work, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Indian Health Service (IHS), the U.S. Army, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Think a government career might be a good fit for you? Keep reading for stories from nurses who work for the government and tips on how you can too.
Military nursing takes sacrifice
“The army’s been very good to my family,” says Lt. Col. Christopher Weidlich, U.S. Army, who is currently finishing his Ph.D. in nursing at the University of Miami on a U.S. Army Long-Term Health and Education Training Scholarship (scheduled to graduate in 2013). He has served in the military for 17 years. “I really enjoy taking care of people, and doing whatever I can to help them out.”
When Lt. Col. Weidlich graduated from high school in 1990, his original goal was to become a doctor. “I wanted to go to medical school, but I didn’t have the grades to support it,” he says. “When I graduated from high school, I found out the Army was offering nursing scholarships.”
He went on to graduate from the University of Miami in 1994 on an Army ROTC scholarship and decided to stay in the military after graduation. He worked as an army psychiatric nurse and a psychiatric mental health nurse in various locations, including Nebraska, Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, in addition to Iraq and South Korea.
After several deployments, Lt. Col. Weidlich feels that while military life comes with unique challenges, he has enjoyed his career. “Being a military family has its ups and downs like any profession, but it’s hard on my kids,” says the father of four.
Despite the personal sacrifices, Lt. Col. Weidlich says his career so far has been a very rewarding experience for him and his family, and advises other nurses considering military nursing careers: “If you go into the military, take advantage of your education,” he stresses. “There are a lot of schools that you could go to within the Army. I would recommend you take any educational opportunities that are there.”
Careers with government agencies
Nurses seeking a more stable lifestyle will find an abundance of opportunities within government agencies. Many have built their careers in the government, like Dinora Dominguez, Chief of Patient Recruitment and a public liaison in the Office of Communications at the NIH Clinical Center, Department of Health and Human Services. Dominguez has worked for the NIH since she graduated from college in 1986.
Finding a Government Job Michael Roberts, government careers expert for About.com, provides answers to common questions for nurses interested in applying for government jobs.What is the best way to look for openings for nurses who are interested in working for a government agency?
You do not need to go to a third-party website to find government jobs. Your best bet is to go straight to government sites since these opportunities are posted online. All federal government agencies post job openings on USAJobs.gov. Each state has a similar job portal, but local government jobs are a bit harder to find. You need to go to each jurisdiction’s website. Also, professional associations can be helpful in finding jobs at all levels.Is applying for a government position much different than applying for jobs in the private sector?
Government hiring processes tend to be more formalized than private sector employers. However, hiring processes for nurses should be similar given the licensing requirements placed on nurses by state governments. The biggest difference applicants will see is that it takes much longer for government organizations to hire as opposed to private companies.
Any tips on résumés and cover letters?
With government organizations, the most important document is the job application form. There are even government job portals that do not allow applicants to add attachments to their applications. The application form forces applicants to tell the organization what it wants to know: résumés, cover letters, and the like allow the applicant to tell the organization what he or she wants to know.
Should applicants be prepared for a more difficult overall process in terms of background checks, qualifications, interviews, etc.?
Not really. Both companies and government organizations will do due diligence on people they intend to hire.
Dominguez always held an interest in doing research and was attracted to the NIH due to the research involved in her position. Today, she coordinates clinical trials and educates the public on the importance of participating in clinical trials—something she’s passionate about.
Bruce Steakley, R.N., B.S.N., a nurse manager in pediatric and adult inpatient behavioral health at the Ambulatory Care Behavioral Health Clinic (NIH), has a career that spans 30 years. He first came to the NIH six years ago.
“After working in community-based mental health inpatient settings and one outpatient setting for all those years, I got discouraged with psychiatry and the state of mental health care delivery in the country,” Steakley says. “So I left and tried other avenues of nursing, but was bored. And so I always returned to mental health and discovered my current position by word of mouth. A friend of my wife told me about this job and I decided to apply for it and now, here I am.”
Clifton J. Kenon Jr., M.S.N., R.N.C.-O.B., C.-E.F.M., I.B.C.L.C., R.L.C., A.W.H.O.N.N., fetal monitoring instructor and maternal-child health nurse consultant at Indian Health Service, found his way to the IHS by posting his résumé on the USAJobs.gov website. “I was recruited to go work for the Indian Health Service as a maternal child health consultant in South Dakota in April of 2011,” he recalls. “And in this role, I’m actually able to have an influence and to lead maternal health programs for the Indian Health Service for our four-state region: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska.”
Steakley also applied through the USAJobs.gov website, which he says is the best place for nurses interested in a government job to go. “I occasionally have people who somehow reach me on the phone and want to apply for a job,” he says. “I step way back from that and just refer them directly to USAJobs.gov. There’s a structure for applying, and I follow the structure.”
Steakley notes that nurses seeking to gain entry with a government agency should bring patience to their job search.
Resources for Your Career Search How to Find Government Jobs Online: http://govcareers.about.com/od/JobSearch/a/How-To-Find-Government-Jobs-Online.htm
Job Boards for All 50 States: http://govcareers.about.com/od/JobSearch/tp/Job-Boards-For-All-50-States.htm
Tips for Completing Government Job Applications: http://govcareers.about.com/od/JobSearch/a/Tips-For-Completing-Government-Job-Applications.htm
“The hiring process is longer and slower, but somewhat more professional,” he says. “I was here on three different occasions, interviewing with three different sets of people. My sense was that they were looking for highly qualified people. I’ve since had opportunities to participate in a number of interviews with nurse manager candidates and clinical manager candidates. Over the years, I’ve hired a lot of people myself, and I think that although I see room for improving the process, I would nevertheless maintain it’s better here than in other settings.”
If you desire to make a leap from the private sector to the government sector, Kenon’s advice is to actively seek out opportunities, put yourself out there, and post your résumé on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (www.opm.gov) and USAJobs.gov websites.
“Continue searching for openings that would meet your qualifications or are willing to train, and call regional recruiters. Most government agencies have recruiters that are actively recruiting new talent to the agency,” he says, adding that recruiters love to hear from those interested in public sector careers. “[They] have unique and challenging opportunities for nurses that want to serve their country.”
Government work culture
Is working for the government much different than the private sector? Some nurses who have experience in both sectors note some differences.
Kenon was a labor and delivery nurse at Duke University Medical Center and the University of Virginia. “The difference between working in the private sector and public sector is being a public servant, as I like to see myself in working for the government. I am helping to fulfill the mission of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. And I’m helping to serve the American people with health care on a national level, as opposed to in the private sector where I was more concerned with serving a local aggregate of people or a specific community.”
Steakley, who worked for various community-based facilities before joining the NIH, says that he feels more supported as a government employee, adding that he has a lot of reinforcement from the three units he manages in terms of clinical management, clinical educators, and clinical nurse specialists. “That allows me to have a slightly more elevated role,” he says, which removes him from the “nitty-gritty” of direct patient care, and enables him to be more involved in management and “setting the philosophy, growth, and performance improvement plans for the unit.”
For Kenon, working for the IHS has changed his whole perspective on nursing. “As an African American nurse, being a public servant and working within the United States Government, it has given me a clearer picture and a greater professional identity for the role that nursing has in leading health care on a national and global level,” Kenon says. “Now, I see what an invaluable role nurses play all across the government with legislative change, translating change into practices, and actually being leaders for the health care delivery system.”
Abundant opportunities
If you think a career in the government is a good fit for you, Dominguez encourages other minority nurses to pursue it because there is a wide array of positions available—not just on the clinical side. She says there are many opportunities for nurses to “think outside the box.” As you start researching for a job, Dominguez says to think of the specific skills that you can bring to the role, and just go for it.
Kenon says a government nursing career is all about dedication. For nurses considering these jobs, his advice is to make sure they have solidified a mission in nursing and the core values of the profession.
“Whether you’re in the private sector or public sector, core values such as caring, innovation, passion, and diversity are going to need to be deeply imbedded in each individual nurse’s philosophy to have a successful career in government,” he says.
Most of all, Kenon believes nurses considering such a career should know that they will be dedicating their career and lives to serving the American people. “That is a calling not to be taken lightly,” he adds.
Once you get your foot in the door, opportunities are abundant for growth, Steakley says. “They’re all around. I think that the nursing leadership and the medical leadership in the clinical center are very supportive of intellectual growth of nurses,” he says. “So I think just getting one’s foot in the door is the hardest part.”
Kenon sees himself building a long-term career as a government nurse. “In five to 10 years, I certainly see myself continuing to serve the American people and hopefully continuing to work within maternal child health,” he says. “I love working for the Indian Health Service and I love serving the Native American and the Alaska Native people. And certainly, within 10 years, I still hope to be leading the maternal child health program within the Indian Health Service.”
In the 2000 hit comedy “Meet the Parents,” Ben Stiller plays a suitor who can do no right in the eyes of his future in-laws. The punch line for many of the jokes is his occupation: He’s a male nurse.
The movie may have left audiences laughing, but not Michael Desjardins, RN. As the first male president of the National Student Nurses’ Association (NSNA), he knows only too well that the fictional jokes are reality for men who have chosen nursing as a career. “After all of the chaos [Stiller’s character causes], the one thing the father can’t forgive is that he’s a male nurse,” he complains. “I don’t see that as funny.”
Desjardins confronts stereotypes about male nurses practically every day. People act surprised when they learn his occupation. Friends have told him to wear his wedding ring to work so people won’t assume he’s gay. Even though he’s only been an RN for a year, he’s already concerned about the effects his gender may have on his career path.
These long-standing perceptions that nursing is strictly a “women only” profession have for years deterred men from entering the field. While nursing has finally started to make moderate inroads in increasing its ethnic diversity, the RN workforce still remains 95% female, according to the most recent National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses. Based purely on the numbers, male nurses are a distinct minority in the profession, regardless of their race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
But today’s critical nursing shortage might just be the catalyst to change that statistic. Recognizing that they can no longer afford to ignore 50% of the population, nursing schools, health care facilities, nursing associations and government agencies are all developing aggressive recruiting strategies to close this gender gap and persuade more males to consider nursing as a viable—and masculine—career.
“Nursing no longer has the luxury of accepting only females,” explains Gene Tranbarger, RN, EdD, CNAA, a professor of nursing at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., and president of the American Assembly for Men in Nursing (http://aamn.org), an advocacy group with 500 members. “We need to find and encourage people who have the ability and qualifications to become good nurses, regardless of whether they are male or female, straight or gay, white or people of color. Today, those differences are irrelevant.”
Making Nursing Schools More Co-Ed
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), nursing schools are spearheading the national campaign to increase gender diversity in the profession. To cite just one example, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston convened a forum of male nurses to develop a plan for attracting more men to its nursing program. As the result, the number of male students at UT-Houston’s School of Nursing has increased to nearly 30% of the student population, thanks to the use of innovative strategies such as redesigning recruitment materials to make them less “feminine” and more appealing to men.
But many experts feel that simply getting more male bodies into classroom seats is not enough. Nursing programs, they argue, must also make significant changes in their curricula and teaching styles to create a more positive and nondiscriminatory learning environment for nursing students who happen to be men.
Tranbarger recalls receiving rejection letters from schools based solely on his gender when he first started his nursing journey in the 1950s. Today, he thinks the discrimination is still present, although it’s much more subtle. “All nursing schools now accept men,” he maintains, “but I’m not sure that all schools welcome them.”
Tranbarger points to professors who still habitually begin class lectures with “Good morning, ladies” and textbooks almost exclusively written by women for women as examples of ways nursing educators fail to acknowledge the needs of male students.
Jim Richmann, RN, BS, CEN, coordinator of patient care services for the emergency department at Underwood Memorial Hospital in Woodbridge, N.J., feels educational opportunities for men who want to become nurses have changed for the better over the past 30 years. But still, he says, societal attitudes about male nursing students have been slow to change.
“When I told my guidance counselor I was interested in nursing, he said, ‘What do you mean? Can’t you afford medical school?’” Richmann remembers. “If you were a male going into nursing, the stereotypes were either that you weren’t smart enough to get into med school or you were gay.”
AACN President Carolyn Williams, RN, PhD, FAAN, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Nursing in Lexington, says nursing schools are trying to make their programs more welcoming to male students, but the task isn’t always easy. Many schools are having trouble finding male faculty who can serve as role models and mentors, she reports. UK currently has two full-time male professors and hopes to persuade a third part-time professor to accept a full-time position.
Leo-Felix Jurado, RN, MA, CNA, APN, BC, associate professor and assistant chairperson of the Department of Nursing & Allied Health at the County College of Morris in New Jersey, says he’s often the first male nurse his students see. He feels the lack of strong male role models in all levels and fields of nursing is a barrier that is blocking men’s entry into the field.
“Men in nursing face the same situation as women have faced in getting into male-dominated professions,” Jurado comments. “Seeing a female CEO motivates other women to pursue business careers, and seeing a male nurse motivates more men to consider nursing. My [male] students are happy to have a male instructor because they see me as someone they will be comfortable talking with, someone who can understand how it feels to be a male nurse.”
Boys II Men II Nurses
The sooner a boy or young man realizes he can be a nurse, the greater the odds are that he will seriously consider nursing as a career choice. For young people in the Omaha area, the idea of a male nurse is no surprise, thanks to the efforts of Art Baux, a senior in the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Nursing (www.unmc.edu/nursing).
Baux became the unofficial mascot for UNMC’s nursing program when he signed up to assist the college’s nursing recruiter, Dani Eveloff. His face has greeted visitors to the school’s Web site and he has spoken about careers in nursing to preschoolers and high school students. His message, Baux says, is that “it’s okay to be a man in nursing.”
UNMC is another example of a nursing school that has achieved encouraging results by implementing recruitment efforts targeted specifically to male students. Between 1999 and 2001, the number of male applicants to the program increased by 54% and the number of males actually admitted rose by an impressive 77%.
In addition to creating more male-friendly recruiting materials, UNMC has used strategies like holding an open house to subtly sell male youths on the idea of going to nursing school. “One of the most effective things we did was to make our open house a family event,” Eveloff says. “We wanted to get both husbands and wives to attend. We had an exploratorium with fun things for kids and then the parents could talk about careers in nursing.”
Since the school had a limited promotional budget, the recruiting staff focused on securing free ads in high-visibility places where people of all ages—not just high school and college students–would be likely to see them. The open house was advertised on a marquee at Omaha’s busiest intersection. Minority newspapers and cable stations ran free promos.
When the school did pay for a newspaper ad, Eveloff made sure it was placed in a gender-neutral part of the paper, rather than in the female-oriented lifestyle section. “People don’t always read the whole paper, but most people check the movie listings,” she points out. As luck would have it, the ad appeared directly above an ad for that weekend’s big action flick.
Opening Closed Doors
It’s a Guy Thing: Making Recruiting Materials More Male-Friendly The University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing, the University of Iowa College of Nursing and the School of Nursing at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston are three schools that have been cited by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing for their outstanding results in attracting male students to their programs. For all three, a key part of the process was taking a critical look at their recruiting materials. What they found was that marketing approaches that had for years succeeded in bringing females to their campuses could actually deter males. “Our brochures had been done in pinks and teals,” recalls UNMC’s nursing recruiter, Dani Eveloff, RN, MSN. Those colors were pretty, but Eveloff doubted the hues did anything to welcome men to the profession. A complete overhaul was in order. “We went to primary colors with a lot of red and black,” she says. “It doesn’t have such a feminine feel now.” The old brochures also used fancy, script-style fonts, which tend to give a more feminine look. Eveloff and her team replaced them with bolder, simpler fonts, which are usually easier to read anyway. Next, they revamped the photography, replacing old photos with more gender-diverse ones. Whether it’s an action shot of a nurse working frantically in a surgical setting or a headshot of male faculty, men must see other men in marketing materials or else traditional stereotypes that nursing is only for women are reinforced, Eveloff advises. But just showing male faces is not enough, she continues. Photos should also depict male nurses performing activities that men can relate to. For example, traditional pictures of a nurse helping a child with a teddy bear are cute but aren’t likely to capture the imaginations of males the way emergency room action shots would. In addition, Eveloff included photos of “nontraditional” nursing students, a pool from which UNMC and other programs have found an abundance of qualified male students. People who are leaving the military, workers whose job skills have become obsolete and career changers longing for a more personally fulfilling job are often open to considering a career in nursing. The appearance of a recruiting brochure is just the first step, however. View the text as a chance not only to educate males about opportunities in nursing but also to dispel stereotypes and myths about the profession. The Men in Nursing Mentoring Task Force at the University of Iowa College of Nursing successfully used this approach to create its innovative “Men in Nursing” brochure, designed exclusively to recruit members of the underrepresented sex. Instead of ignoring or glossing over the stereotypes, the brochure addresses them directly, explains task force member Jo Eland, RN, PhD, FNAP, FAAN, director of Student Affairs. “The market we’re going after has those concerns. By addressing them up front, we hope our readers will continue to read the brochure.” Meanwhile, the UT-Houston School of Nursing has capitalized on still another successful marketing approach: giving nursing a “macho” image. Its recruiting materials emphasize action-oriented nursing specialties that have traditionally appealed to males, such as emergency care and trauma nursing. The school also carefully scrutinized its brochures to remove “flowery, feminine language” and has even placed recruiting ads in the sports pages of newspapers.
It’s one thing to attract men to the nursing profession but another thing to keep them there. When male nursing students begin to transition into the professional RN workforce, they often encounter enough discrimination to make them seriously reconsider their choice of careers. Here, too, experts says, traditional ways of thinking will need to change radically before gender diversity in nursing can truly become a reality.
Even while doors of opportunity for women have swung open throughout the medical profession, male nurses still find that many doors are closed to them in the clinical setting, especially when female patients are involved. “In some clinical education programs, hospitals have a difficult time finding a place for male nursing students in women’s health areas,” Jurado explains. “It’s common to hear things like, ‘He really doesn’t belong here. I’ll find an alternative assignment for him.’”
This prejudice isn’t just limited to labor and delivery rooms, he adds. Often, male nurses must be accompanied by female “chaperones” even when doing simple abdominal examinations–an exclusionary practice in light of the fact that no such restrictions are placed on female nurses who care for male patients.
Other men in nursing agree that male and female RNs are not treated equally in the workplace. For example, male nurses often find that their female colleagues automatically expect them to handle unruly or heavy patients. “If someone has to be lifted, the male nurse will be the one called,” Tranbarger says, adding that male nurses are often so busy doing the unit’s heavy work that they fall behind in their own patient care.
Tranbarger is currently studying the recruitment and retention of male nurses at hospitals near East Carolina University. His findings suggest that while many male RNs are feeling the effects of negative stereotyping in the workplace, their number one complaint is gender politics.
“I think at the staff level, most men would tell you they are generally welcomed by their [female] colleagues, but problems come in instances,” he says. “There’s an underlying tension between the overwhelming number of women in nursing and the much smaller number of men trying to find a place within that group. Gender-related management issues are a common problem. Some men have trouble accepting a female authority figure and some females have trouble managing men.”
Adds Desjardins, who works at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute in Salt Lake City, “Sometimes it does get lonely [when you’re a man in nursing]. You feel like you’re not part of the sisterhood.”
Give a Guy a Break
Desjardins’ election to lead the country’s largest student nursing association may have surprised many, but he says gender was not a factor. He won by a slim margin of 38 votes out of a total of 500 cast.
While Transbarger cites Desjardins’ presidency as a step forward, he feels that many nursing organizations still aren’t sure what to do with male members. He’s attended national conventions where he felt less than welcomed. “Sometimes one of the first orders of business is to declare all of the bathrooms in the building as female,” he says. “I’ve had to go to the next building to find a bathroom.”
Desjardins, too, is frustrated at the slow pace of change. “Everybody talks about bringing more men into nursing, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing anything about it,” he declares. “In many cases, it takes a backseat to recruiting other minorities.”
One strategy that has helped diversify the face of nursing is the establishment of scholarships and other financial assistance programs targeted to racial and ethnic minorities. While minority scholarships have created more opportunities for men of color to earn nursing degrees, their definition of “minorities” rarely includes Caucasian males.
Desjardins says he doesn’t think there is a need for scholarships that target white men, since this population is statistically not disadvantaged in society. He does feel, however, that financial support from health care employers could help more male nursing technicians and men in other health care specialties make the transition to nursing.
“Employers need to step up to bat,” he says. “Pay for school in exchange for a couple of years of service.” The investment will pay off, he adds, because employers and the patients they serve will ultimately reap the rewards of a more diversified nursing workforce.
The feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s drastically changed gender expectations in America, opening the door for women to explore new careers—careers once available exclusively to men. Women have capitalized on these opportunities and have excelled in what was once considered a “man’s” world. However, it is unfortunate that the reverse is not true for men entering professions once dominated by women. Men encounter more negative criticism from the public for entering female-identified professions;1 thus the entry of men into feminine occupations is less common.2 The men who do enter these occupations risk their gender identity being questioned.3 One such “feminine” profession is nursing, but it has not always been that way.
Before modern day nursing, men were nurses, not women. The earliest recorded nursing school was established in India around 250 B.C. It was exclusively for men; women were not allowed to attend because it was believed that women were not as pure as men.4 As time passed, organized religion took the lead in caring for the sick. During the era of the Bubonic plague, the Christian brotherhood nursed the sick and buried the dead. Saint Benedict founded the Benedictine Nursing Order and the Catholic Church ordained the Knights Hospitallers.5 During times of war, it was common for men to volunteer as nurses. The famous poet Walt Whitman volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War.6
In the 1800s, nurses were uneducated, of low status, often prisoners or prostitutes and considered cheap unskilled labor.7 Modern day nursing began with Florence Nightingale.
What could have been a momentous leap forward for both male and female nurses preempted the decline of the male nurse. Nightingale ushered in trained professional nurses who transformed nursing into an acceptable and respectable occupation for women. Unfortunately, men were forced out of nursing due to stereotypes. It was believed that women were naturally better at nurturing the sick—more affectionate and more caring than men.8 In the early 1900s, women’s domestic roles played into the stereotype. The fact that men had shown compassion and caring as nurses throughout history was ignored.
The early labor movements and success of women’s suffrage in the early 1900s also contributed to the decline in the number of male nurses. In 1901, the Army Nurse Corps became part of the Army Medical Department, but only women were allowed to serve as nurses. This injustice ended in 1955 when government legislation opened the door for male Army nurses. Also in 1901, the American Nurses Association (ANA), at the time as the Nurses Associated Alumnae, was formed. Men were excluded from ANA until 1930.9 Even as late as 1982, men still experienced obstacles in being accepted into nursing school. The Supreme Court ruled that an individual’s constitutional rights were violated when he was refused admission into the Mississippi University for Women’s School of Nursing. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated that “excluding males from admission to the School of Nursing tends to perpetuate the stereotyped view of nursing as an exclusively woman’s job. The policy lends credibility to the old view that women, not men, should become nurses, and makes the assumption that nursing is a field for women a self-fulfilling prophecy.”10 It has been a slow process incorporating men back into the nursing profession, and the percentage of male nurses (5%–6%) has remained virtually unchanged for decades.11
But what exactly is masculinity and femininity? Masculinity and femininity are abstract concepts based on gender; it is expected that males will be masculine and females will be feminine.12 Until the mid-1970s, it was believed that masculinity and femininity were bipolar, thus conceptualized as being at opposite ends of a single continuous spectrum. This theory made it impossible for men or women to possess both types of attributes simultaneously. Bem’s psychological androgyny theory challenged that assumption.12 Psychological androgyny theory treats masculinity and femininity as two independent dimensions. According to this theory, masculinity and femininity are two separate entities; therefore, an individual can possess both masculine and feminine attributes simultaneously. Androgyny denotes the integration of femininity and masculinity within a single individual. If individuals lack dominance in either trait (masculinity or femininity), they are considered undifferentiated. According to Tillman & Machtmes, masculinity and sexual orientation are often used interchangeably.13 This use of language has contributed to male nurses being stereotyped as homosexual by the public, making some heterosexual men reluctant to enter the profession. Fortunately, men who do enter the profession represent nurses as individuals who enjoy working with people and are kind, caring and highly respected. Some men consider caring (defined by society as a feminine trait) as a natural masculine trait, synonymous with providing and protecting.14 In contrast, television and the movies portray nursing as mundane and monotonous, with nurses holding subservient roles.15
Several studies have investigated how nurses were classified using the new theory of androgyny. Culkin, Tricarico and Cohen examined the sex-role orientation of 68 nursing students at a small community college (20 male and 48 female) to determine if male students were more androgynous than female students. They found that male nursing students were no more androgynous than female students.16 In a similar study conducted by Pontin, 23 nurses (10 men and 13 women) in the United Kingdom were surveyed in regard to their sex-role orientation. Pontin also found that men and women were equally androgynous.17 McCutcheon conducted a study to examine the relationship between the work experience of male nurses and sex-role orientation in the Orlando, Florida area. McCutcheon found that experienced male nurses were no more feminine than inexperienced male nurses. Therefore, McCutcheon concluded that the nursing profession does not feminize the male nurse.18 A study by Fisher was conducted at a hospital in Sydney, Australia, to determine if sex-role identity differences existed between male and female registered nurses. The study found no significant difference in masculine and feminine scores between male and female nurses, and sex type categories. However, when male nurses from this study were compared to Bem’s sample of men, Fisher found a significant difference between the two. More men in the nursing profession were cross-typed as feminine.19 A more recent study conducted in Ireland had similar findings. Loughrey concluded that the sample of male nurses adhered to female norms more so than male norms.20
The review of literature showed a need for wide-scale research within the United States, and a nationwide study was conducted in April 2009 to determine if male nursing students are as feminine as female nursing students and to determine if male nursing students are more feminine than the “normal” male. Members of the National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) were asked to participate in the study. Twenty-eight men and 81 women completed an online survey for a total sample size of 109 nursing students. The survey consisted of several descriptive identifiers and 30 personality characteristic questions based on the short-form Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI). The BSRI is a psychoanalytical instrument consisting of 30 personality characteristic questions that are used to determine gender-role orientation. Ten questions are stereotypically feminine, 10 are stereotypically masculine and 10 are filler questions that have no bearing on individual scores. Data was collected from April 24 through May 22, 2009 and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The sample obtained represented 37 of the 50 states comprising the United States.
The results of the study showed that a significant difference does exist between male and female nursing students in regard to sex-role orientation. The men entering the nursing profession are very masculine and no more feminine than the “normal” male. Contrary to popular belief, the nursing profession attracts men who exhibit a high degree of masculinity; therefore, male nurses should not be stereotyped as feminine. If McCutcheon is correct and nursing does not feminize men, then the next generation of male nurses will be more masculine then male nurses of the past.
References:
Meadus, R.J. (2000). “Men in Nursing: Barriers to Recruitment.” Nursing Forum, 35 (3).
Ballor, D. (2001). Women and Men in Non-Traditional Fields. Bates Assessment Newsletter, 3(3),3.
Harding, T. (2007). “The construction of men who are nurses as gay.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, 60(6), 636–644. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04447.x
Joel, L.A. (2003). Kelly’s Dimension of Professional Nursing (9th ed.). The McGraw-Hill Companies.
“Nursing 101: Facts about Nursing.” (2003). Retrieved 8 Jan 2009.
Ahrens, W. D. (2002, May). “Walt Whitman: Poet & Nurse.” Nursing. FindArticles.com. Retrieved 15 Feb 2009.
Mackintosh, C. (1997). “A historical study of men in nursing.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, 26, 232–236.
Mackintosh, 232-236.
O’Lynn, C.E. & Tranbarger R.E. (2007). Men in Nursing: History, Challenges, and Opportunities. Springer Publishing Company.
Greenhouse, L. (1982, July 2). “Court Says Schools cannot Bar Men.” Nytimes.com. Retrieved 8 Jan 2009. http://www.nytimes.com
Hart, K. A. (2005). Study: Who are the men in nursing? National Student Nurses Association Imprint, (November-December), 32-34.
Bem, S.L. (1974). “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, (2), 155-162.
Tillman, K. & Machtmes, K. (2008). “Considering the myths and realities of masculinity for men in nursing.” Men in Nursing, 3(1), 23-28.
Tillman & Machtmes, 155-162.
Kelly, N.R. & Shoemaker, M. (1996, April). “The Experience of Being a Male Student Nurse.” Journal of Nursing Education, 35, 170-174.
Culkin J, Tricarico D, & Cohen, F. (1987). “Sex role orientation of the nursing student at a community college.” Psychological Reports, 60, 948-950.
Pontin, D. (1988). “The use of profile similarity indices and the Bem sex role inventory in determining the sex role characterization of a group of male and female nurses.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, 13, 768-774.
McCutcheon, L.E. (1996). “Male Nurses: More Like John Doe Than Jane Doe.” Psychological Reports, 79, 1227-1232.
Fisher, M. (1996). “Sex Role Characteristics of Males in Nursing.” Contemporary Nurse, 8(3), 65-71.
Loughrey, M. (2008). “Just how male are male nurses..?” Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17, 1327-1334.
Once upon a time there was a nurse who felt bad because not enough African American men wanted to be nurses. She thought it would be good for sick people in hospitals if there were more nurses who were black men. So she decided to do something about it. She wrote a children’s book called My Hero, My Dad The Nurse, about a little boy who wants to be a nurse when he grows up, just like his daddy. Then she went to lots of schools and read her book to all the kids. The kids and their teachers liked the book very much. They all lived happily ever after, and some of the kids might even grow up to be nurses. The End.
Actually, that’s just the beginning of the story. And fortunately for the nursing profession, this story isn’t fiction.
My Hero, My Dad The Nurse is a real-life children’s book written by Maggie Thurmond Dorsey, EdD, RN, associate professor of nursing at the University of South Carolina Aiken. And young readers aren’t the only ones who are responding positively to the book. Dorsey’s efforts to encourage more African American males to consider nursing as a career are also being applauded by grownup audiences, including the American Assembly for Men in Nursing (AAMN).
It all started back in 2002 when Dorsey, then a doctoral candidate at Georgia Southern University, was trying to decide on a topic for her dissertation. “I had been teaching for 20 years at that point,” she recalls. “One of the things I’d noticed is that we’ve had, and continue to have, very few African American men in our nursing program [at USC Aiken]. I didn’t know if this was something that was unique to our school [or if this was the case in other nursing programs as well].”
To find answers to that question, Dorsey surveyed over 240 schools that had baccalaureate nursing programs. “My research confirmed what I had seen at USC Aiken: that very few African American men were entering nursing programs, and even fewer were graduating from them,” she says.
Since then, working to increase the recruitment and retention of African American men in nursing schools has become Dorsey’s mission and passion.
“I think that all well-educated and trained nurses can provide safe, quality care to all people,” she emphasizes. “But we do provide care to a very diverse population. Many patients feel [more comfortable] when they have caregivers who are similar to them. I think African American men bring to the table some unique social and cultural characteristics and experiences that can only enrich the profession of nursing.”
Mother Knows Best
Why did Dorsey decide to tackle the problem by writing a children’s book? “The nursing school administrators I surveyed for my dissertation research didn’t think that going into elementary schools was an effective approach for recruiting African American men into nursing,” she admits, “but that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I’m a mother of three [grown] sons and I was very involved with them as they were growing up. I used to read to them quite a bit. I really believe that we have to plant seeds of success early with our children. [It may be too early to get them interested in a specific career, but we can teach them] that they can be somebody if they work hard.”
Dorsey wrote and rewrote the story, interweaving ideas based on her personal and family experiences. Michael David Daniels, the little boy who tells his story in the book, is named after her three sons, David, Daniel and Michael Dorsey. The name of the schoolteacher in the book, Mrs. Earl, was inspired by her mother, a retired teacher, and her father, Earl, who was a school principal.
To illustrate the book, Dorsey chose local art teacher and USC Aiken alumnus Lorenzo Williams, BA, MAT. “Mr. Williams has a wonderful story himself,” she says. “He was a high school dropout and he was working in a school as a janitor. A teacher there told him: ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life cleaning toilets?’ This opened his eyes. It was not the way he wanted to spend his life. So he got his GED, went to technical school and then came to USC Aiken to earn his master’s degree.”
Now all she needed was a publisher for the book. She eventually decided to self-publish through BookSurge, a print-on-demand publishing company.
“I knew that the traditional way of getting a book published was to write it and then send it out to a publisher with a query letter and wait for a response,” she says. But Dorsey was so passionate about the project that she didn’t want to wait; she wanted to publish her book now.
The paperback edition of My Hero, My Dad The Nurse came out in June 2008. Dorsey subsequently published a hardback version especially for libraries. She also worked with the multimedia technology department at USC Aiken to produce an audiobook version, which she says includes “wonderful sound effects.”
Sharing the Story
Over the past year, Dorsey has maintained a busy schedule of traveling to local elementary school and kindergarten classrooms to read her book to the students. She also did a reading at a Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) leadership conference sponsored by the South Carolina Hospital Association.
Dr. Maggie Thurmond Dorsey and Lorenzo Williams, author and illustrator of My Hero, My Dad The Nurse, present their book as part of Children’s Week activities at the Augusta Museum of History in Augusta, Georgia.
“There were 600 high school students there,” she explains. “I was a little nervous about reading the book to teenagers, [since it is written primarily for younger children]. But the high school kids got into it!”
In fact, the book has received rave reviews not just from students, but from parents, teachers and librarians as well, Dorsey reports. “I’ve just been so thrilled with the response,” she adds. “This has just been a wonderful opportunity.”
Although My Hero, My Dad The Nurse can be purchased from Amazon or BookSurge.com, “it’s not something that we’re really selling commercially,” Dorsey says. “Most of [the promotion] has been local and word of mouth.”
This fall, Dorsey will be bringing her message to a national audience: She was invited to be a keynote speaker at the 2009 American Assembly for Men in Nursing national conference, to be held October 23-24 in Cincinnati.
“I am extremely excited and humbled to be going,” she says. “When I got my invitation, their email said that they had heard me present the book. I was really surprised, because I don’t know where they heard me present it. But someone in AAMN had heard me read the book and they knew of my interest in, and passion for, encouraging men to become nurses.”
So what’s the next chapter in this story? Dorsey says she’s planning to write more children’s books “about the same little boy and his daddy, the nurse.” She is already working on the second book in the series, again illustrated by Lorenzo Williams, which she hopes to publish later this year. In the meantime, she says, “I’m enjoying sharing my story. It has given me a lot of joy. And I hope that my book gives others as much joy as it has given me in sharing it.”
For more information about My Hero, My Dad the Nurse, including how to buy the book, contact Dr. Maggie Thurmond Dorsey at[email protected], (803) 641-3268.
From the first male nurse to be inducted into the national nursing Hall of Fame to nurses of color who courageously blazed trails in education, research, clinical practice and advocacy, the groundbreaking achievements of minority nurse leaders were in the spotlight throughout the American Nurses Association’s 2004 Biennial Convention, held June 26-29 in Minneapolis.
At the convention’s opening session, Luther P. Christman, PhD, RN, FAAN, was inducted into the ANA’s prestigious Hall of Fame, established in 1976 to honor nurses whose accomplishments have significantly affected the nursing profession. As the first male inductee in the Hall of Fame’s 28-year history, such barrier breaking is typical of Christman’s pioneering 65-year nursing career. He was the first man to be named dean of a nursing school in the United States. As dean of Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing, he was the first to employ African-American women as faculty members.
A champion of diversity in nursing and an advocate for the recruitment of more men into the profession, Christman was the founder of the American Assembly for Men in Nursing as well as a founder of the National Student Nurses’ Association. As founder and dean of the Rush University College of Nursing, he established a premier school of nursing that pioneered the practitioner-teacher role and science-based academic models.
The next evening, at the convention’s awards presentation, ANA honored 11 outstanding nursing leaders, including two nurses of color. Harriet L. Brathwaite, MSN, RN, received the Mary Mahoney Award, which recognizes significant contributions to advancing equal opportunities in nursing for members of minority groups.
As a clinical specialist, educator and administrator, Brathwaite, who is African American, has facilitated the establishment of programs and services that have made it possible for people of color to become part of educational systems, professional organizations and health services delivery systems. She has been a role model and mentor to many minority nurses, encouraging them to join professional associations, become involved in the political process and serve as mentors themselves to help advance the educational and professional achievements of nurses from all backgrounds.
Lolita B. Compas, MA, RN, CEN, a past president of the Philippine Nurses Association of America, received the Honorary Human Rights Award for her advocacy on behalf of foreign-educated nurses working in the U.S. Since arriving in America in 1969, Compas has helped many other immigrant nurses overcome the challenges of transitioning into U.S. nursing careers, such as finding housing, adjusting to cultural differences and studying for state boards. During the 1980s nursing shortage, she was instrumental in providing documentation to the New York State attorney general regarding the exploitation of foreign nurses. Her efforts led to sanctions against offending employment agencies.
