Men in Nursing - Literature review Example

? Men in Nursing Men in Nursing The antiquity of nursing is almost completely a past of women’s happenings, despite the element thatmales have toiled as nurses since the profession’s infancy (Mackintosh1997). The failure to recognize this contribution leaves male harbors with little information about their specialized background and antique position, a situation which nurse Okrainec (1990) suggests perpetuates the notion that men nurses are anomalies. This work scrutinizes the antiquity of male nurses in Canada and offers understandings into the traditions in which sex and the philosophical designation of harboring as women’s profession have omitted, restricted, and equally, radical the careers of men harbors. Such understandings can cause escalation in the understanding of the obstacles that influence the staffing and retaining of men in the occupation, and they are dynamic if nursing is to grow, not only staffing policies focused on males, but more significantly, retention strategies that address current and uninterrupted gender relations that impact all nurses lives. Historical accounts of the monastic movement, dating back to the fourth and fifth centuries, show that people of the male gender participated actively in the provision or nursing care and protection to the ailing as members of religious groups. The Command of St John of Jerusalem, an order of military knights or knight’s hospitallers was the first of many orders of nobility established in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cavaliers of St John of Jerusalem who defended Jerusalem during the crusades, later provided protection to travelling pilgrims and also built hospitals and castles across Europe that served as both lodgings for pilgrims and places to nurse the sick. This order continues to operate as the St John Ambulance Link, an organization formed to offer people the necessary training required to caater for the health needs of the injured and ill, in 1877. Men as nurses also participated in non-military nursing orders such as the Brothers of St Anthony. This order, founded in 1095, cared for victims of erysipelas, a disfiguring skin disease later called St Anthony’s fire. Other orders included the Hospitallers of St John of God, founded in the late sixteenth century in Spain, and the Alexian Brothers, who became a religious order in 1472 (Kauffman 1976). The Alexians, an order of uneducated craftsmen, preached the word of God and provided basic healthcare to the lowly in society in ancient Europe (Kauffman 1976). It was a culture of the Alexians to burry the dead, and the ministry gained momentum and appreciation during the plague years of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. With the final disappearance of the plague in the eighteenth century, the Alexian Brothers gained fame because of their work. The insignificant, but rising number of males in the nursing occupation does not herald a liberal integration of male and female sex roles. The confirmation presented in this paper proposes that even in female-conquered jobs such as nursing, male-controlled gender associations which reflect a tall estimate of all that is manlike and masculine, play an important role in situating an uneven number of males in managerial and elite department positions. At the core of this sex dynamic is the need to detach the masculine from the less valued female. Male harbors do this by staffing plans that allow them to detach themselves from female coworkers and the quintessential female image of nursing itself, as a precondition to uplifting their own status and authority. They are assisted in this mission by male-controlled cultural organizations that craft and spread male benefit, as well as by female nurses themselves who, deliberately or automatically, nurture the vocations of male coworkers (Wheeler 1991). The low status of women in a society controlled by the male gender is manifest in the female dominated occupation of nursing. Here, stereotypical feminine traits of nurturing, caring, dependence and submission exist in stark contrast to masculine characteristics such as forte, hostility, domination, discipline and impartiality. The incompatibility of masculine and feminine sex role identities, coupled with the fact that increasing numbers of men are now entering the nursing profession, raises queries on how men adapt themselves to conform to the nursing profession’s femininity, and how the increased number of men in a n occupation which was a preserve of women affected female nurses. This article analyses these queries and seeks to point out that the fact that men and women working together in a profession once dominated by the latter does not guarantee equal treatment of the male and female gender in nursing. On the contrary, a review of literature suggests that although there are only a few men compared to women I the nursing profession, the men enjoy better priviledgse than their female counterparts. This position is established and maintained by patriarchal cultural institutions, and the use of strategies to help male nurses dissociate from their masculinity and identify with their female colleagues and the feminine image of nursing itself. These strategies and the patriarchal structures that support them will be discussed in relation to their advantages for male nurses and disadvantages for women (Wheeler 1991). According to Ryan & Porter (1993) 3·1% of nurses in Canada and the United States are male p. 265. This qualifies them to be referred to as a minority (up to 15%), they suggesting that tokens are people who differ from the majority in official appearances such as race or sex, which carry with them a set of suppositions about beliefs, position and behavior. In the context of masculine beliefs, men’s superior position and command in relation to women accords them situational dominance, with the result that small numbers of men in the female dominated nursing profession are given a special and privileged minority status (Ryan & Porter 1993). Of additional significance, is the observation that with this high status comes power. In the nursing profession, power and prestige are becoming associated with small numbers of men by virtue of their occupying a disproportionate number of elite specialty and administrative positions (Ryan & Porter 1993). The privilege accorded male tokens in female dominated professions such as nursing is in keeping with a view that it is men, not women, who have the tendency to count on each other. Men also have a plus factor that adds force and persuasiveness to what men say and do. For women, however, there is a minus factor that depreciates and weakens. Consequently, how men and women tokens are men authors, contend that women in nursing should be significant and indicative of the high value associated with all things male and masculine in patriarchal culture. The acknowledgement that men constitute a privileged group in a patriarchal society appears to be a major rationale that encourages men to pursue nursing as it is anticipated that a large influx of men will raise the profession’s status and prestige. There is a flaw in such reasoning, however, as the issue of whether men will actually improve the image and status of nursing and the lot of nurses in general, is debatable. The lack of consensus or investigation regarding the impact of men in and on the profession is reflected in- diverse views expressed in the nursing literature. In Canada, arguments to deny men commissioned officer status in the nursing division of the armed forces were put forward by the Canadian Department of National Defense. Wedgery stated that patients in military hospitals had few needs, given that 90% were men. Concern for men nurses them, however, does appear to be a significant factor in the decision to deny them commissioned officer status. This situation can be conceptualized, not only as an attempt to maintain nursing’s ideological designation as a woman’s occupation, but most importantly, as an effort geared towards defending men’s high status and prestige relative to women. The decision eventually to allow men nurses in the Canadian armed forces to obtain commissioned officer status did not herald progressive integration of women and men’s gender roles. In 1970, three years after the first male nurse was commissioned as a lieutenant after working 18 years as an X-ray technician, no change had been made in the quota of only four positions allotted for the enrolment of men nurses in the Canadian forces. This, once again, illustrates the extensiveness of sex related labels and the thought that men cannot make good caregivers. Efforts to limit men’s participation, in nursing, are also evidenced by professional association practices that restricted male nurses’ attainment of full legal status. As stated previously, men nurses in Britain were initially confined to a separate register and excluded from professional self-governing processes by virtue of the 1919 Nurses Act. Male nurses were not acknowledged until 1949, when they were included in the nurses’register. This, according to Mackintosh (1997), ended the formal legislative discrimination against men nurses in Britain. This suggests that efforts to limit men’s participation in nursing by men gatekeepers. In Canada, a notable example of legislative discrimination is the province of Quebec denying men nurses registration status until 1969. As early as 1945, the Association of Nurses of the Province of Quebec and the Canadian Nurses Association began lobbying for legislation that would allow registration for men nurses in Quebec. In defending Quebec’s refusal to register male nurses, it was argued that it would be unacceptable for men to be juniors to women. In Canada and the USA, post-war circumstances did not have similar effects, but the literature does begin to reflect a growing awareness of the desire to entice more men intojoining the career. In Canada in 1959, Bentley argued that nursing had to come up with ways of attracting men to the profession. As the profession began to encourage men to consider a career in nursing actively, there was an acknowledgment in the Canadian nursing literature that such a plan was not without its ‘penalties’ as women nurses harbored fears that many senior positions would be taken over by men eventually (Wedgery 1966). Evoking the altruistic and feminine notion of serving others, Wedgery pointed out that if service to society was the undisputed and unchanging aim of nursing, then female nurses had to be willing to run the risks that such idealism involved, in order to be fair to the male gender. In Canada, the uneven number of male nurses in management has not been appealing, but the trend exists. Male nurses constituted only about 2% of the total nursing population, yet 5% of men nurses occupied high positions as directors and assistant directors, compared with only 3% of women nurses. Additionally, 12% of men nurses were supervisors and supervisory assistants when compared with 6% of women nurses (p. 17). The perception that male nurses were more passionate about their work and stood a better chance to develop in their jobs and ultimately stabilize a profession that had been at the mercies of female weaknesses was expressed in the nursing literature in support of male nurses rising to administrative positions. That this attitude reflected hidden institutionalized advantages for men and disadvantages for women, was not acknowledged The hiring and promotion advantages accorded men due to the high value attached to male character/leadership traits, assumes even greater significance when it is compounded by advantages hidden in patriarchal institutions. Demographic data regarding men and women nurses’ marital status and education highlight this observation. The stereotype that married men are also family bread winners provides an additional advantage to men. It implies that married men are more permanent employees that marriage appears to benefit men and disadvantage women in career advancement. It is not surprising that women nurses who occupy positions of status and prestige tend to be single and childless. A second example of demographic data, which reveals hidden institutionalized advantages for men, is that of education. The literature indicates that, in general, men nurses tend to have more university degrees than their women colleagues. Okrainec (1994, p. 99) reported that 18·2% of male nursing scholars compared to 6·7% females, had college degrees. Since academics is on e of the most important determinants of career success (Williams 1989), women nurses are disadvantaged when competing in hiring and promotion situations with men who have better credentials. Regardless of the advantages male nurses enjoy, as demonstrated by their disproportionate representation in leadership positions, they have been limited in other areas of nursing. Nurse education for men students typically lacked obstetric education, or at best had modified course content with limited opportunities for client contact, a situation attributed in part to negative attitudes of nurse educators and patient discomfort. This limitation extended beyond the educational context when the American judicial system ruled in favor of banning men nurses from labor and delivery in the case of Backus vs. Baptist Medical Center (Trandel-Korenchuk & Trandel-Korenchuk 1981). Such a ruling suggests that the nursing profession itself supports the view that men are better suited to practice in some areas of nursing than others. Reasons offered in support of the court’s decision included the possibility that women would object to intimate touching by men nurses, which would require the presence of women nurses to protect the hospital from charges of molestation. Furthermore, nursing programs could not be adapted to allow physicians’ objections and chaperoning policies, and all, or substantially all men, would be inappropriate for this type of nursing. Trandel-Korenchuk and Trandel-Korenchukconclude that such reasons suggest that men nurses were not accepted because of their male nature and nothing else. The participation of males in nursing has been guided by both political and social factors, as well as beliefs of masculinity and femininity. Their historical association with nursing indicates that, for centuries, they have played an important, albeit invisible, role as nurses. This invisibility has made nursing to be viewd as a domain of females, locking out males from participating actively in the profession. The advantages men have over women in nursing have had significant implications for the career paths of men. Within nursing, the division of labor based on gender, has resulted in men being channeled into areas of specialization that are considered more congruent with masculinity.. Understanding the centrality of gender in relation to the history of men in nursing, in Canada, is essential if nursing is to address longstanding gender inequities that impact on men and women nurses. This examination of the history of men in nursing offers visions, which can increase the understanding of the barriers that impact on their recruitment and retention of men in the profession. Such intuitions are important if nursing is to advance not only staffing strategies focused on men but, more importantly, retention strategies that address current and uninterrupted gender relations that affect all nurses’ lives. References Kauffman C. (1978). The Ministry of Healing. Volume 2. The History of the Alexian Brothers from 1789 to the Present. Seabury, New York. Mackintosh, C. (1997) A historical study of men in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing 26, 232–236. Okrainec G. (1994) Preconceptions of nursing education held by male nursing students. Western Journal of Nursing Research. 16(1), 94–107 Ryan S. & Porter S. (1993) Men in nursing: a cautionary comparative critique. Nursing Outlook 41(6), 262–267. Trandel-Korenchuk K. & Trandel-Korenchuk D. (1981) NAQ legal forum. Restrictions on male nurse employment in obstetric care. Nursing Administration Quarterly 6(1), 87–90 Wedgery, A. (1966). The will to match our opportunity. The Canadian Nurse 62(6), 35–39. Wheeler D. (1991) Men in nursing: nursing’s liberators? Canadian Nurse 87(6), 29. Williams C. (1989) Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Nontraditional Occupations. University of California Press, Los Angeles. Read More