NATION Men can reduce nursing shortage

It is becoming more acceptable for males to enter the nursing field.
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
While washing an elderly nursing home patient, Jim Wingert discovered his calling.
He was 34 at the time, living in Raleigh, N.C., toiling as a nurse's aide in hopes of attending medical school.
"I knew right away that it was right," he said. "The work is great."
Turned off by the eight-year slog through medical school, though, Wingert is studying to be a nurse.
Like him, a small but growing number of men are entering nursing school, beckoned by changing family values and vistas of opportunity.
"As a guy, the field is wide open," Wingert said, listing career paths in medical sales, flight nursing, the operating room or high-tech training.
"There is a nursing shortage," he continued, "but if they were to tap into the average, red-blooded American male, there'd be no shortage."
Regis University
Across the nation, only one in 20 nurses are men. But in Colorado, Regis University's accelerated one-year program boasts that one in five students are men.
"I think it's because when they are young, 18 to 25, a lot of men say they aren't interested in nursing," said Academic Dean Patricia Ladewig. "But as they get a little older, they get more comfortable making that choice."
Sitting in front of the traditional tudor-style classrooms of Regis University, Wingert, now 38, and Kenneth Good, 32, bubble with enthusiasm when asked why they picked nursing.
"It's exciting!"
"It's autonomous."
"The adrenaline."
"The technical aspects, in [operating room] nursing, flight nursing."
But as much as anything, both were attracted to the profession's flexible hours. Three 12-hour shifts count as a full-time job and will let them stay home with small children while their wives work.
"It's a great profession for people who want to work three days and be off for four," said Dennis Gonzales, 48, a nurse at Littleton Adventist hospital in Colorado.
Female nurses, for the most part, welcome males. They say men improve nurses' pay and stature.
Said Ladewig: "Men bring a reality check. They tend to look at things with a good business sense."
Perhaps it's the next facet of changing social norms that now pull women away from nursing and toward the high-profile careers.
But stereotypes wear away slowly.
In the hit movie "Meet the Parents," a nurse is begged by his future father-in-law, played by Robert DeNiro, to become a doctor.
When Wingert tells people he's in nursing school, they glance at his wedding ring, and he wonders if they think he's gay.
And Gonzales says patients joke that they were expecting a pretty, young female nurse.
"It's still going upstream," said Paul Gunnick, 40, a nurse with 20 years' experience. "It's portrayed not only as a caring profession but a subservient position.
"I'm not saying that's accurate, but that's the perception," he said.
Nursing experts agree they must change that image of "kind but dumb" to attract recruits of any gender.
Advertisements for the field emphasize nurses' decision-making capacity and technological savvy.
But at its core, nursing remains a caring profession.
That may not turn off young men.
"It's becoming more acceptable for men to be more nurturing," said student Kenneth Good. "At the same time, nursing is so much more than that."