Letters

Setting aside gender

A f t e r graduation from nursing school during the 1970s, I was challenged by friends, family, and female nursing colleagues: When was I going to “do something more?” (Meaning, become a physician, an administrator, or anything other than remain in a predominantly female profession.) Since then, the 2% male student enrollment has risen to 12%; it‘s ”in” and sexy to be a nurse. Some colleagues, who would be shocked to be identified as sexist, insist that a male influx will finally elevate the status of nursing to its rightful place.

Patients are less sexist. Although I have occasionally cared for one, usually elderly, who responded awk- wardly to the care of a ”male nurse,” most patients sim- ply have taken me as a nurse.

I, a male, together with gendered patients and col- leagues, have learned to set aside gender to nurse through the stuff of novels and miniseries-every day at work. For instance, when I was a student, gender was irrelevant to my 20-year-old prima gravida patient and her family when she needed nursing care that included a complete assessment, personal hygiene, and being ”straight-cathed” for urinary retention. There was one gender-obsessed player: Since male student nurses had only recently been allowed to have obstetrical learning experiences, my instructor had a personal, public crisis over the propriety of a male student and a female patient sharing such intimate procedures. (My wife and I laugh about healthcare workers’ “catheter hangup,” since she, as a resident physician, was often called by nurses to insert catheters in male patients.

Later, when I was a registered nurse, the extended family of a chronic respiratory patient, who died in my arms after months of my care, didn’t dwell on the nurse’s gender; we had heavier concerns that cut across a sexual bias. Ditto, as I cried with a young, newly wid- owed new father after he found his wife’s bed stripped and empty the morning after her death; maybe that is a ”guy thing,” but I still cry when I think about his pain.

As time went on, together with other gendered nurses, I gathered the experience, education, and credentials that

have reassured many people that men in nursing are okay. There are still some holdouts in our own ranks.

I still encounter prejudiced nurses who are unable to see that nursing might transcend gender. As a per diem bedside nurse, I have heard some female colleagues insist that men in nursing are routinely paid a higher hourly wage than women. Lecturing about nurse empowerment, I have been personally attacked as a man for dealing with ”women’s issues.” Incredibly, I have sat through intense doctoral seminars on epistemology (you know, how nurses know what they know) where my cohort slowly slid into a groupthink that men in nursing, because they are men, can never personally comprehend the nursing experience. Many nurses are not sexist, but some women (and men) in nursing are. When nursing issues exclude the men in nursing, they are no longer nursing, but truly women’s issue.

Recently as editor of a magazine with a large nursing readership, I orchestrated an issue that focused on the’ men in nursing. I planted the term ”male nurses” and I awaited an outcry from either sex. Hardly a murmur, maybe it’s an outdated issue, particularly for men.

Gender issues stalk the workday of many professionals-lawyers, physicians, engineers, and even sales personnel. In nursing, any stereotyping pales before the rich experience that both men and women in nursing know together. If someone needs to call me a male nurse, it really doesn’t matter to me or diminish the importance of my nursing experience. I’ve been male all my life- and a nurse for the last 20. And happy with both.

Robert Hess, MSN, RN, CCRN, CNAA

Nursing Forum Volume 29, No. 1, January-March, 1994 35