Isn't it odd
when most people describe a nurse, and it happens to be a male nurse, they
almost always have to point that out? It is true that most nurses are female,
but the number of male nurses grows by the day.
Male Nursing Facts
Many people
are surprised to know that the first nurses throughout the world were actually
men. The first nursing school was in India in about 250 BC and only men were
allowed to be nurses. During the Black Plague in the 1300s, a group of men
formed one of the first hospitals to care for the victims. Today, about 6% of the nursing workforce in
the U.S. is made up of men. However, in the military at least 35% of the
nursing force in each of the three branches is composed of men. Men were excluded
from nursing in the military in the early 1900s and did not resume this
function until the early 1950s, after the Korean War. Throughout the world today, more men are
entering the field of nursing and there is a major push to delete the
stereotype that nurses are women. In fact, men are finding roles in all fields
of nursing. Nursing is a not a gender, it is a profession. The art of caring is
not something only women understand. With the tremendous shortage of nurses,
more men are encouraged to join the profession.
After the
events of September 11, 2001, people throughout the world began to feel a sense
of needing to bring more meaning into their lives. The desire to do something
to make a difference has led many to look to nursing as a new career. Many more
men as well as women have begun to find a great satisfaction in becoming
nurses. And more and more men are considering nursing as a second career.
Related: Patient and Family Involvement
The History of Male Nurses
Nursing has
become so associated with women that modern schools of nursing try to attract
men with ads. Two influences played a
pre-eminent role in the evolution of modern nursing and men’s involvement in
care of the ill.
During
warfare, men had long been involved in caring for the sick and wounded – for
example, men were trained to nurse the soldiers of the Roman Empire. The most famous association of nursing and
warfare lies in the figure of Florence Nightingale. Before she went to the
Crimea, male orderlies nursed the British soldiers, although they had no
training, except through experience and by working closely with surgeons. In the American Civil War, men were also
involved in caring for the sick and injured; the Confederate army designated 30
men per regiment to care for the wounded and remove those from the field who
could not walk. The title of nurse, however, was only awarded to the women
organized by Dorothea Dix, who was appointed Superintendent of the Female
Nurses in the Union Army by the Secretary of War. There were also groups of male volunteers on
both sides who served as nurses. The most famous of these was the poet Walt Whitman.
He is unusual in that he left a personal account of the care of the sick during
the Civil War from a male perspective: two collections of poems, Drum-taps
(1865) and Sequel to Drum-taps (1865-6), and a memoir, Specimen Days in America
(1887). One of his most famous poems from this period is ‘The Wound Dresser’,
which 150 years later still resonates as it describes activities and emotions
that nurses continue to experience.
There is
evidence that nursing care in colonial hospitals was provided by a mix of both
males and females, mainly without formal training until the late 19th century.
A history of Parramatta Hospital (1790-1818) reveals that “the sick of the day
were cared for by incompetents, for the most part drunken men and in some cases
drunken women”.
Related: Nursing Shortage Solutions
The use of the
word ‘wardsman’ illustrates one of the mechanisms by which men’s contribution
to nursing has been rendered invisible. The title ‘nurse’ became associated
almost exclusively with women, while men delivering care similar to or
identical with that of their female colleagues were variously titled wards men,
stewards, orderlies, porters and attendants, etc. Often the work they undertook
was circumscribed, such as the provision of care to groups of male patients
which might have offended the sensibilities of a woman.
Fortunately,
today most of society has gone beyond assigning the role of nurse to females
only. The fact is, more and more men are
entering the field of nurses. Men make
great nurses, just as women do. A great nurse is determined by skill and
ability.
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