Nursing As An Attractive Career Option For Men

Nursing, in modern times, has not been perceived as a profession to be pursued by men; as a vocation, perhaps, through a religious order. You may find it surprising, though, that until the late 1800s nursing was a service primarily rendered by men.

It wasn’t until Florence Nightingale started advocating professional nursing care at the frontline, during the Crimean War (1853 – 1856), did women nurses start making their presence felt on battlefields, in Europe. In the USA, men were still performing a majority of the nursing duties during the American Civil War (1862 – 1865). It was during World War I (1914 – 1918), and the demand for able-bodied men, that governments started mandating “only women” for nursing services.

This mandate became so well entrenched that, even as late as 1980 men were not allowed admission into a majority of the nursing colleges in the USA. Today, although there aren’t any restrictions to men entering the nursing profession, the percentage of men in nursing is still very small (9 – 10%); thanks to the historical legacy, and to (Western) societal perceptions formed during this period when most of nursing was out of bounds to men.

With the projected acute shortage of nurses in the developed world, nursing is now, more than ever, an extremely attractive career option for men; coming at a time when traditional sources of blue-collar male employment, such as manufacturing and construction, are drying up on account of increased productivity or greater mechanization. Overcoming this shortage will require potential employers to increase wages significantly higher than the inflation rate, as mentioned in a previous blog.

So, the demand and the wages render nursing an attractive career for men (and women too), but what are the issues to keep in mind while opting for a career in nursing?

• The first is, of course, the perception that nursing is a woman’s job. Going against this stereotype will require a good deal of character and resolution, especially when explaining the choice to one’s near and dear, and to friends. Overcoming this perceptual obstacle is half the battle won.
• There are few male role models in nursing, for men choosing to join the profession, given the near-historical absence of men from this profession. So, advice, from a male perspective, on handling academic and professional pressure, specializations to opt for, etc. is hard to come by.
• Choosing the right specialization is important. Women-specific specializations, e.g. Obstetrics & Gynecology, can be avoided, and during one’s career there may be situations when female patients may be more comfortable being taken care of by a female nurse. That said, male nurses tend to like specializations such as Anesthesia, Emergency & Trauma, Critical Care, Flight nursing, Oncology, Orthopedics, Psychiatry, Education, and Nursing management, to name a few.
• Discrimination against male nurses, in the workplace, may be gradually fading but a male nurse should be prepared for it. Such discrimination may manifest itself solely on account of gender, or on account of relationship with the physician, or even on account of communication issues with female counterparts. In many cases discrimination is perceived and not practised, because the male nurse is operating in an unfamiliar situation where he is a (gender) minority.

It’s not all caution and taking care, though. There are a few advantages to being a male nurse: especially around patients who are violent or aggressive, or when physical strength is required (to lift or support a patient). And, strangely enough, at least in the USA, although men represent less than a tenth of the nursing population, they earn more their women counterparts in the same roles. This anomaly has been explained through the fact that male nurses tend to be better qualified than their female counterparts, for the same roles.

When it comes down to making a decision, it should be noted that nursing is a professional vocation, and any man opting for it as a career will first need to decide on whether he is going to find satisfaction and contentment in caring for an unwell fellow human being. If the answer is yes, then the issues outlined above will easily be resolved. If not, the career may not turn out to be as attractive as the salary promises.

Read More

Will Nursing Be The Highest Paid Profession In The Future?

The question is rhetorical, of course, and the answer is no. The reason, though, the question is being asked is because of the large projected worldwide shortage of nurses within the next decade-and-a-half.

The shortage is expected to arise on account of an increase in the demand for nurses. This increase in demand is linked to a variety of factors:

• The world’s aging population is going to be needing more nursing care. The United Nations’ World Population Aging 2013 report has some interesting facts about the imminent greying of the world’s population. Population aging is happening on account of decreasing mortality and declining fertility, and the global share of older people (aged 60 years and above) will increase from 11.7% in 2013 to a projected 21.1% in 2050; or, in terms of numbers, from 841 million in 2013, to more than 2 billion in 2050.
• Lifestyle changes are resulting in a spike in chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension; conditions which will require increased medical intervention.
• Advances in medical science are making it possible for an individual to survive severe trauma, albeit with significantly reduced functional capabilities. Such individuals will require regular nursing care.
• The move from therapeutic care to preventative care is going to place additional stress on the nursing fraternity, as nurses will constitute an inordinate proportion of the healthcare professionals driving preventative healthcare.

The demand has started rising in the developed world, and will gradually spread to the less developed world and least developed countries. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects the employment of registered nurses to grow 19%, in the USA, from 2012 to 2022; faster than the average for all occupations.

As a counterpoint to the increased demand for nurses in the developed world, are the constraints to supply in meeting this demand. The reasons for the supply constraints are primarily:

• An increase in the number of nurses leaving the workforce, in the developed world, as the “baby boomers” generation reaches retirement age.
• There is little or no nurse staffing surplus left to cut in large healthcare institutions, as most cuts were carried out at the turn of the last century; and on account of the realization that nurse staffing is closely associated with patient outcomes – quality of care reduces with a decrease in the nurse-to-patient ratio.
• Given the lead time required to train a registered nurse, and the fact that the nursing profession still carries vestiges of its vocational origins, there is a significant lead time for new supply to narrow the demand gap.

This mismatch between demand and supply, as any person with an understanding of economics will tell you, will first result in an increase in wages. A paper, by Joanne Spetz and Ruth Given, modeling wage growth and supply in the US market, arrives at the conclusion that wages, adjusted for inflation, “must increase 3.2 – 3.8 percent per year between 2002 and 2016, with wages cumulatively rising up to 69 percent, to end the shortage”.

Hence the question: will nursing be the highest paid profession in the future? However, as wages increase, affected parties (healthcare organizations, governments, etc.) will look at tempering this increase through initiatives outside the healthcare profession.

Two developments will have a direct impact on wages that nurses can command:

• Developments in robotics will make the job of nurses easier, thereby increasing their productivity. While it may be inadvisable and certainly unfeasible in the near future, to have robots play a direct role in patient care, they can certainly assist a nurse deliver better care, more efficiently.
• Advances in medical science – specifically in genetics/epigenetics and stem cell research – may allow medical practitioners to alleviate the deleterious effects of old age (dementia, lower immunity, disequilibrium, and brittle bones) to such an extent as to reduce the burden on a country’s healthcare system.

Any which way, these are interesting and exciting times for the nursing profession, and the rhetorical question headlining this blog is just a concise articulation of the sign of the times.

We would be interested to hear your thoughts on the wage-potential of the nursing profession.

Read More