Professor sees more men entering nursing

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- When Roger Voelkel entered Duke University's nursing school in 1966, the faculty had to hold a conference to determine what to do with him.

He was, after all, one of the first two men ever to major in nursing at Duke when the United States Navy offered to pay for him and a fellow hospital corpsman to attend the school. And with this first-ever status came questions, such as whether Voelkel would be allowed to go on an obstetrics rotation and whether there might be something a little odd about him: a man entering a career field dominated by women.

Now nearing the end of his career, Voelkel can look back on how this stigma has lessened during his decades in the profession. The assistant professor of nursing at Western Missouri State University in St. Joseph sees more male students coming through the nursing program now than in past years, and although they still make up only a small portion of the department, they are representative of a growing population of male nurses nationwide.

"There's been a drastic change, and of course, it's for the positive," he said. "There are many men who, like women, go into the profession because they care and want to serve. And now, it's more accepted."

Nationwide, men made up 5.8 percent of the 2.9 million nurses registered in 2004, according to the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, which is published every four years by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 2000, men made up 5.4 percent of those in the profession. Although the percentage difference between 2000 and 2004 seems small, it actually represents an increase of more than 20,000 men in nursing.

"The increase is happening slowly, but it is happening," said Dr. Kathleen Andrews, the chairwoman of Missouri Western's nursing department. She adds that men now make up about 11 percent of the students in her department, which is significantly more than when she began working there 27 years ago.

Men are drawn to nursing for many of the same reasons women are, Anderson says: good salaries, good job opportunities and the chance to work in a variety of medical fields and settings. She adds that a nursing degree is mobile, allowing a person to work anywhere in the United States, and that with the nationwide nursing shortage, the demand for nurses isn't going to decrease any time soon.

But even with these incentives to go into nursing, it's not easy to entirely overcome the stereotype that nursing is a female profession, especially among young men, Anderson said. She researched high school boys' perception of nursing for her doctoral thesis and found that, in their minds, the stereotype is still strong. But she has also found men's perception of the profession tends to change over time.

"Very often, men in our department are older students who are coming back to school to change careers," she said. "They see nursing as a good job, and they're not hung up on that stereotype anymore."

Randy Bever, who works in the emergency department at Heartland Regional Medical Center, is one of these men who went into nursing mid-career. After about a decade as a paramedic, he was ready for a job with a better salary that wouldn't be as hard on his back and knees but that would let him stay in the medical field.

"What I love to do is take care of people," he said. "And now, instead of working with patients for a short period and not knowing what happens to them, I'm there through the treatments."

His job also allows him to work in a fast-paced environment, which is what many male nurses prefer, he said. Voelkel agrees with this, noting that he has seen a lot of male nurses go into jobs in operating rooms, emergency rooms and critical care units.

Wherever they choose to work, it's good to have men in nursing, Andrews said.

"Nursing is so important to health care," she said. "We want to meet the needs of everyone in the community, and the best way to do that is to have people in your profession who represent all segments of society."