More men enter nursing as demand grows and male-dominated industries decline

Male nurses say stereotypes persist despite rising demand

The Labor Department projects 189,000 registered nurse job openings each year for the next decade, but men make up only 1 in 8 nurses nationwide, NPR reported. With diminishing opportunities in male-dominated industries such as manufacturing and software engineering, nursing has emerged as a stable alternative and a pathway to a middle-class life, the outlet said.

At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, close to 1 in 6 nursing students are men, outpacing the national average, and nearly 1 in 5 faculty are men. In some specialties within the university hospital, male nurses are nearly as common as female nurses, according to NPR.

Students at the school said they are grateful for the job security at a time when many of their peers are unsure of what is next. Ethan Stinson, who will graduate next month and go into a job in the university hospital’s psychiatric unit, said the demand is strong. “I feel like it’s really easy to get a psych job if you’re a nurse,” he said. “They’re hunting people all the time.”

Hatim Nasser, whose family had wanted him to study computer science, has a job lined up in the university hospital’s heart and lung transplant intensive care unit. He said he switched to nursing because he wanted to help people. “Just caring for them and helping them feel comfortable,” Nasser said.

The national median wage for registered nurses tops $90,000 a year, according to NPR. Chris Jones, a graduate student pursuing a dual master’s degree in nursing and business administration who was the first in his family to go to college, said one reason he became a nurse was so that he would be able to take care of himself. “And if I wanted to start a family one day, too, that I could do that as well,” Jones said.

Nursing has also become more technologically advanced, drawing some men to the field. Steven Parsons, a cardiovascular operating room nurse and adjunct instructor at the university, said robots are frequently used in lung surgery and sometimes in heart surgery. “You’ve got guys that are kind of interested in that mechanical stuff,” Parsons said.

Despite growing interest, stereotypes persist, according to NPR. Male nurses are often mistaken for doctors. Jones said it happens when he enters patients’ rooms and elsewhere in the hospital. “They would give me the resident discount in the cafeteria, and it’s a good discount,” he said. “I’ve had to correct them.” Because nursing requires patience and compassion — traits traditionally seen as feminine — some people assume all male nurses are gay, the report said.

Nursing student Nicholas Seay, who is Black, said older Black men often look relieved when he walks into the room. At times, they seem more at ease talking with him than with the nurse he is shadowing. “I think they’re happy to see [a] familiar face,” Seay said. He has also encountered female patients who are not comfortable with him at their bedside, in which case he steps aside. “If I was a woman, I don’t know if I’d want a male student in the room either, so I really can’t be mad,” Seay said.

Amiri Saadiq, a nursing student headed for a job in the bone marrow transplant intensive care unit, said he does not feel that nursing is not for men. “I don’t really feel like nursing isn’t for men or anything like that. When I go to the hospital, I see guys all the time,” Saadiq said.

At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the nursing school has been intentional about creating a welcoming environment for men, according to NPR. It features male students on all its marketing materials, sends male and female nurses into high schools to recruit students, and maintains an employee resource group for men in nursing at the university hospital.

Professor Curry Bordelon, who started his career in what he called “small-town Louisiana” when men made up only 4% of nurses, said the institutional approach makes a difference. “We’re never going to flip the entire iceberg. But I can get one little ice cube at a time out of it,” Bordelon said. “And when you do that, you’re opening up that opportunity for change.”

Bordelon recalled enrolling in a nursing program at a local community college and finding about 90 students in his first class, of whom just three were men. He said the instructor told the men that the only reason they were there was to satisfy a quota. “That, to me, was sort of a wake-up,” Bordelon said. He later found a more welcoming environment at a different nursing school.

Bordelon went on to work in a neonatal intensive care unit, where male nurses are extremely rare, according to NPR. He said fathers in the NICU would sometimes get defensive when they saw him talking to their wives about breastfeeding. He made a point to include them. “‘I’m here to support the entire family unit,’” Bordelon said he would tell them. “‘Which means — Dad, would you like to do skin-to-skin?’” Bordelon said holding a baby to one’s bare chest is important for the baby’s long-term success and prepares fathers for the transition home.

Studies have found that patients respond better to healthcare providers who look like them, according to NPR. Bordelon said having more male nurses could improve health outcomes. “Patients respond when they see people caring for them that look like them,” he said.