{"id":68113,"date":"2018-03-13T15:36:57","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T20:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=68113"},"modified":"2018-03-13T15:36:57","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T20:36:57","slug":"questions-about-nursing-and-masculinity-persist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/questions-about-nursing-and-masculinity-persist\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions about nursing and masculinity persist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Gwen Aviles<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">Take a second and think of a famous nurse.<\/p>\n<p>Who popped into your mind? Maybe Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton or Mary Breckinridge?<\/p>\n<p>The assumption that nursing is an almost exclusively-female field continues to persist, even as more men have steadily entered the profession since the 1970s. A recent study by Elizabeth Munich and Abigail Wozniak, economists at the University of Louisville and University of Notre Dame, respectively, found that about 13 percent of nurses in the United States were men as of 2015, an increase from 2.2 percent in 1960.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Although nursing is gaining popularity among men, misconceptions regarding nursing and gender remain widespread\u2014especially at DePaul University. Matthew Sorensen, the director of the School of Nursing at DePaul, says prospective male students routinely come to him expressing doubts about enrolling in nursing school.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s still a fear of being a nurse and being male,\u201d says Sorensen. \u201cProspective students have asked me if people will think less of them or think they are less of a man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reluctance of some male students to study nursing can partially be attributed to a relative lack of male nurses, but also to misrepresentation of nurses\u2019 roles in hospitals in the media.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNurses have long been undervalued and misunderstood, especially on TV, where they play secondary characters who are not actively engaged in patients\u2019 recoveries,\u201d says Daniel Mead, a doctoral candidate at DePaul\u2019s School of Nursing.<\/p>\n<p>Mead decided to become a nurse after caring for his sick father, but not before asking his mother\u2014who is also a nurse\u2014whether nursing was \u201ceven appropriate for males to go into.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite lingering misconceptions, nursing continues to grow as a field and a viable career option for both males and females. At DePaul, about 16 percent of nursing students are male, a number DePaul nursing professor Linda Graf believes is sure to grow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNursing is more respected since I began in the 1970s,\u201d she says. \u201cTo be a nurse today, you need a more specialized degree, and this formalized education is bringing in qualified people from both genders.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: Some of the books used in medical education. (Gwen Aviles\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Gwen Aviles Medill Reports Take a second and think of a famous nurse. Who popped into your mind? Maybe Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton or Mary Breckinridge? The assumption that nursing is an almost exclusively-female field continues to persist, even as more men have steadily entered the profession since the 1970s. A recent study by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":68127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,3987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-science","category-winter-2018"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Questions about nursing and masculinity persist - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/questions-about-nursing-and-masculinity-persist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Questions about nursing and masculinity persist - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Gwen Aviles Medill Reports Take a second and think of a famous nurse. Who popped into your mind? Maybe Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton or Mary Breckinridge? The assumption that nursing is an almost exclusively-female field continues to persist, even as more men have steadily entered the profession since the 1970s. 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