Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk by Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers

Author:Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers [Summers, Sandy & Summers, Harry Jacobs]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Medical, Nursing, Social; Ethical & Legal Issues, social science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9780199337064
Google: 0RFVBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-09-25T20:25:30.840133+00:00

The Male Nurse Action Figure: The Media Confronts Men in Nursing

Men have provided health care to others for thousands of years, but today fewer than 10 percent of US nurses are male, and that generally appears to be the case worldwide.55 Only one in ten US men has even contemplated nursing as a career.56 Still, the percentage of US men in nursing has risen from 2.7 percent in 1970 to 9.6 percent in 2011, according to US Census data.57 Increasing the number of male nurses is a critical part of helping the profession gain the power and diversity it needs to overcome the current global shortage. In 2011 the American Assembly for Men in Nursing launched the “20 X 20 Choose Nursing Campaign,” a public relations effort to increase the enrollment of men in US nursing programs to 20 percent by the year 2020.58

The social view that nursing is “women’s work” has particular importance for men in the profession. Even the English language reflects that traditional view. People still use “nursing” to mean breastfeeding. The terms “matron” and “sister” remain common ones for nurses in some nations, including the United Kingdom. In 2002 Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing changed its pink student identification cards to green to make men more comfortable wearing them. Many people wrongly believe that all male nurses are gay, or that they’re not smart or motivated enough to be physicians, as the research discussed above showed.

These attitudes have a real impact. Roslyn Weaver led the 2013 study of Hollywood’s portrayals of male nurses published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing. She told Reuters that “when men in nursing are almost invisible in popular culture or are stereotyped as incompetent or somehow ‘unmasculine,’ then men who choose to enter nursing can find it difficult to combat,” and “perhaps reflecting this, there are often higher attrition rates for male students than female students in nursing.”59 A 2003 NurseWeek study found that nearly a third of male nurses said they had experienced “sexual harassment or a hostile work environment related to the conduct of physicians.”60

Fictional media creators clearly have had trouble resisting the male nurse as object of ridicule. Some portrayals have used male nurses for their novelty value, notably for the feminist role reversal described previously: nothing makes the new breed of female professionals look more powerful than having a cute male nurse to order around. In Hollywood and advertising products, the sexual identity of male nurses is often an issue in a way it simply would not be for other characters. But even Hollywood has generally resisted the worst stereotypes. There have been portrayals of strong male nurses, although rarely prominent or long-lasting ones. The news media has also reported effectively about men practicing nursing and about efforts to recruit men to help resolve the shortage. These efforts do often stress that “real men” can be nurses, arguably reinforcing exclusionary gender stereotyping, as Thomas Schwarz suggested in his 2006 piece in the American Journal of Nursing, “I Am Not a Male Nurse: Recruiting Efforts May Reinforce a Stereotype.

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