MALE CALL - Stereotypes fade for men in nursing

By Bonnie V. Winston

When Lavoy Bray Jr. entered nursing school 35 years ago, he was one of only three men in his class of 30 students at Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville.

Today, men no longer are rarities in nursing school classrooms or working as nurses in hospitals and elsewhere. Their numbers are growing, said Bray, who is now dean of quality enhancement services at Southside Regional Medical Center Professional Schools in Petersburg and president of the Central Virginia chapter of the American Assembly for Men in Nursing. Fully 25 percent of the Petersburg nursing school's entering class this fall was male, said Bray. "We've come a long way," said Bray. "But we still have a long way to go."

Stereotypes are gone
No longer fighting an old stereotype that nursing is women's work, men are pursuing nursing careers in larger numbers. They are finding security and stability in a growing segment of health care, with many men turning to nursing after careers in other fields, including some that have suffered downsizing with the economy.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest number of new jobs for any occupation is expected in nursing. By 2018, more than 581,000 new nursing jobs are expected to be created.

With median annual wages of registered nurses at $62,450 in May 2008, opportunities within the profession are "excellent," the federal bureau reports.

"Nursing is challenging mentally, provides job security and, with a nursing shortage hanging over our heads, we need more qualified nurses to provide care," Bray said.

More and more men are ready to step into those roles, said practitioners around the commonwealth.

Career changers
Bray, whose nursing career expanded with time and further education - he now has a baccalaureate degree in nursing and a master's degree in education - has male nursing colleagues and chapter members who have switched to nursing from law enforcement, chemistry and truck driving. They bring a variety of experiences to their new profession.

Likewise, several of the 49 male registered nurses and 17 male licensed practical nurses working throughout the Newport News-based Riverside Health System have come from the military.

"Men are absolutely the minority in nursing, but many more are coming into the profession because of employment potential and interest," said Terris E. Kennedy, vice president and chief nursing officer for Riverside.

She said many men are going into accelerated bachelor of science in nursing programs, which are designed for people who already have degrees in other fields. Using those credits, they can finish a bachelor's degree in nursing within three or four semesters, she said. Carl Erickson, a cardiology nurse manager at VCU Medical Center in Richmond, went into nursing after finding he couldn't support himself in New York City with a film production degree from the University of Virginia.

Began as assistant
On the advice of a friend, he got a job as a nursing assistant in a Brooklyn hospital and liked it. While working at the hospital, he earned a bachelor's degree in nursing from Cornell University-New York Hospital School of Nursing in 1977.

He and his wife moved back to Virginia in the mid-1980s, where his nursing career and education have continued at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned a master's in nursing administration and leadership in 2007 and is a nurse manager in the Pauley Heart Center.

Erickson said he began noticing more male colleagues in the profession when the tech bubble burst in the 1990s. "A lot [of men] were coming to nursing as second careers," he said. "Stereotypes were gradually disappearing and there was good marketing out there about careers in nursing."

In preparing for a talk on men in nursing for a May 2010 Week of the Nurse observation, Erickson collected data on the number of male nurses working at VCU Medical Center.

About 8.25 percent, or 183, of the hospital's nurses are men, he said, while 5 percent, or seven, of the 130 nurses in VCU's clinics are men.

Stats similar
The statistics are similar at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Carolyn M. Webster, chief nursing office and senior vice president of nursing, said between 5 percent and 10 percent of the Roanoke hospital's nursing staff is made up of men. Both hospitals are reflective of national figures.

According to the 2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 6.6 percent of all licensed registered nurses in the United States are men. Yet men comprise 7.1 percent of all RNs employed in nursing. The statistics also show that a greater proportion of male nurses - 76 percent - work in hospitals compared with 61.2 percent of women in nursing. And men tend to favor certain areas of nursing, according to the survey. For example, men constitute 41.1 percent of all nurse anesthetists, the survey shows.

Preferring the action
"Men seem to like the action-packed areas of nursing, like the ER," said Kennedy of Riverside Health System. Her observations were echoed by Webster of Carilion, who sees men gravitating to emergency services nursing and flight nursing. Erickson of VCU Medical Center said he has witnessed the same.

"Men tend to like units where there's more high-tech equipment, like the surgical-trauma unit, which is intensive care," he said. "Fifteen percent of my staff [in cardiac care] are men," he said.

EMT to nursing
Stephen G. Branch, 48, launched a career in nursing after spending several years as an emergency medical technician with the Buckroe Volunteer Rescue Squad in Hampton.

When doctors and nurses he saw regularly on his runs to the hospital suggested he go into nursing, Branch took their recommendation to heart. He worked as an emergency room tech at the now-closed Newport News General Hospital while earning his licensed practical nursing degree in 1982. He called the transition "smooth" from running with a rescue squad to working as an emergency room nurse. He most recently has worked as an ER nurse at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News and at Sentara Port Warwick, a free-standing emergency room in Newport News that's an extension of the larger Sentara CarePlex Hospital in Hampton.

"Many floor nurses think of the ER as too much stress," Branch said. "But I like the faster pace. You never know what may walk through the door that you'll have to deal with - a laceration or a heart attack." As for his patients and female colleagues, "there is no stigma or stereotype because I'm a male," Branch said. "All they see is someone rendering care to the sick and injured."

A move from the military

Arthur B. Davies, a Navy corpsman during Vietnam, was 30 when he started nursing school in the late 1970s. He earned a nursing degree in 1981 at VCU and started working as an intensive care unit nurse at Chippenham Hospital.

Now retired from the Navy Reserve, he had been called up during the first Gulf War in 1990 and was put to work as a nurse at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

After stints in home-based care and IV-PICC line education and care, Davies returned to hospital nursing, where he now works as a staff nurse in the operating room at Bon Secours St. Mary's Hospital in Richmond. He was the OR's urology coordinator at St. Mary's from 2004 to 2009.

"The role of the nurse is a stronger role now," Davies said. "Nurses are getting more respect and autonomy." At 61, he said he's sometimes mistaken for a doctor "because of my gray hair and because I come across as competent and I'm over 6-feet tall."

It takes teamwork
He said nursing is a profession that takes a lot of teamwork.

"People think men in nursing is a new phenomenon, but it's not," said Bray of the AAMN. "We've always been here. Our history is just not out there like the story of Florence Nightingale.

"In Virginia, when [the state] started licensing nurses in the early 1900s, males were applying for licenses then."

Bray said his organization, which has about 650 members nationally, is committed to supporting men in nursing school and to being a sounding board for those within the profession. He also sees his chief goal as educating the public about the history of men in nursing, particularly as their ranks grow.

"We're males, we're in the nursing profession and we're not going anywhere. We're here to stay," Bray said. "We need to ensure that health care is the high quality that it always should be," he said. "And if we don't have the number of nurses that there needs to be - regardless of whether they are male or female - then we'll be in trouble."

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