Indiana Wesleyan University officials want more men in nursing.
The nursing division at IWU remodeled its offices to be more gender-neutral, encourages a change of mindset about nursing and created an extracurricular group for men in nursing.
With men representing roughly 10 percent of IWU’s nursing students, the university is already above average, said Barbara Ihrke, IWU’s executive director of nursing programs. The division realized a few years ago the profession was viewed in a particularly feminine light, so they decided to make some changes.
“We have men who want to be in nursing, so we decided we were going to make a real effort to try to attract men and make nursing at IWU a little more gender neutral,” Ihrke said.
The department was transformed from pastels and flowers to neutral colors with a large-screen television. When Ihrke originally looked at the proposed changes, she didn’t like them. She called in the men in the department, who said, “I really like that.” Ihrke went through with the changes and said she likes them now.
“It really has a whole different look, and I think that that will help as young men come in to visit us,” Ihrke said.
The effort to recruit men to nursing is more than a bucket of paint and wanting to increase a percentage, though. IWU nursing professors said the industry needs men.
“There is a national nursing shortage that’s significant,” said Rob Dawson, IWU’s interim chairman of the division of nursing and director of the Transition to Nursing program. “If men went into nursing at the same rate, or even half the rate that women went into nursing, the nursing shortage in the United States would be completely resolved.”
As of early this month, 6.7 percent of Marion General Hospital’s registered nurses were men. Tracy Livingston, a licensed practical nurse in the surgery department, has worked as a male nurse for 20 years at Marion General Hospital. In May, he graduates from IWU as a registered nurse.
“It’s very rewarding, and I very much enjoy what I do,” Livingston said.
During his 20 years as a nurse, he said he’s watched people become more comfortable with having a male nurse take care of them. He hasn’t had any recent issues with patients being uncomfortable with him.
Livingston said he sees several advantages to his profession and for hospitals to have male nurses. In some cases, women are more comfortable with a female gynecologist. He said he thinks men can be the same way with nurses, and he anticipates the population of men in the profession growing.
Dot Clark-Ott, IWU instructor of nursing, said she also wants to see the percentage of men in nursing and in IWU nursing classes increase. Men care for patients just as much as women do, Clark-Ott said, but there are some differences.
“Men do different things when they’re nurses,” she said. “They tend to joke a little bit more. … They touch, but they don’t touch in quite the same ways.”
The differences aren’t bad, though — they’re just different, she said.
Beyond the renovations and the group for men in the nursing program, the university is also reaching out to area middle schools and high schools, placing men into school nurse roles to get students more familiar with the idea.
“The schools have been tremendously receptive,” Clark-Ott said.
For Ihrke, more men in IWU’s nursing programs would be an improvement, but she wants more diversity overall. She wants to see different ethnic backgrounds in the program.
“The more diversity, the better it is,” she said. source
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