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Amid nurse shortage, a university rolls out the welcome mat for men
- ogogmad 3mo agoI think we should create a masculine-sounding word for "nurse", like "(patient/care) (guardian/maintainer/technician)". Nursing still sounds like breastfeeding (check the etymology!), which I'd reckon sounds offputting to most men. Neologisms are cringe, but demeaning men is as well.
- branon 3mo agoThis is a nice idea but I think practically the shift will come not from instituting gender-affirming nomenclature but rather redefining male biases. The idea of being involved in an important (and historically female) profession dedicated to compassionate care should be received as honorable by men irrespective of the job title's femininity. I disagree that it's demeaning.
- bryanlarsen 3mo agoI think what would help a lot would be a strong male nurse as a lead in a medical television drama. We've had strong male nurses in secondary characters, but not as leads or co-leads. A sexy male nurse should appeal quite strongly to the traditional medical drama audience; it'd let a studio follow the traditional formula but be enough of a change that it's not a rehash.
- Georgelemental 3mo ago"Patient Care Technician" is already a thing, it's a level under nurse
- all2 3mo agoI've been calling sports physios "body mechanics" for quite awhile now. A much more appealing term, IMO, and it cuts to the heart of what the job is about.
- seemaze 3mo agoServe your country and join the war against malady by enlisting as a front line high 'T' tactical germ fighter today!
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- quadrifoliate 3mo agoThat's likely what people will still call them, regardless of the neologism. I am not opposed to the neologism, but like most, it will be really hard to agree on a single one so we should continue to use "nurse" and ignore its etymology meanwhile.
- yoyohello13 3mo agoEmergency department Tech is already a job
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- Larrikin 3mo agoI wonder how many comments will complain about DEI for men.
- fhdkweig 3mo agoWhen I was a kid, I thought that nurse/doctor was a gender specific term. They went to the same schools, but when they graduated, men were called "doctors" and girls were called "nurses". It was an embarrassing moment when I found out that, no, they are not the same thing.
- TMWNN 3mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/6AYJ9YQpxQI https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6AYJ9YQpxQI
- fhdkweig 3mo agoThanks, "because cats are girls and dogs are boys" triggered a memory of SNL sketch of a faux-1952 educational film strip "A lady's guide to party planning" from 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI_c1F994gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI_c1F994gs
- qup 3mo agoIt's not DEI. When you're short on nurses, trying to invite men isn't DEI. If we had plenty of qualified nurses, but hospitals made quotas saying that 20% of nurses must be men, that would be DEI. It's replacing merit (let me sort for "best available nurse" and hire that person) with another attribute (let me sort for "male nurse," then sort for "best available nurse in the male group", and hire that person). If you hire the best available male nurse, you may have passed on the best available nurse. Given the demographics of nursing, seems likely. Anyway, they're not talking about having a surplus of candidates, so that doesn't apply.
- bonsai_spool 3mo agoWhat does the ‘I’ stand for in DEI? Say a man thinks nursing is for women and not for men. Say an employer wants more nurses irrespective of sex. Is that employer engaging in DEI if they spend more money on male re-education than on recruiting women?
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- bluefirebrand 3mo agoI have been wondering how long it would start to take before historically female roles would start courting men the way STEM has been courting women the last couple of decades After years of "why are men dropping out of the workforce" articles it seems we finally are seeing some people come to their senses that yes, you do actually still have to "court" men to enter different careers to make it seem like appealing work for them to do
- bryanlarsen 3mo agoI think schools have been courting male teachers for quite a while now. And according to the article, this courting of male nurses has also been going on for many years.
- TimorousBestie 3mo agoYep, can confirm. I was aggressively recruited for education as a math undergrad. There was no way that was going to happen, too many people view male teachers as inherently predatory.
- murphyslab 3mo ago> I was aggressively recruited for education as a math undergrad. Was it because you were male or because you were studying math? Many schools struggle to find good math teachers; it's one of the qualifications in perpetual shortage.
- TimorousBestie 3mo agoBoth.
- orwin 3mo ago> too many people view male teachers as inherently predatory. I absolutely hate this. It's the same in every field in contact with kids. When I was a youth camp counsellor, a director told me after stuff happened with other counsellors "at least now, I'm sure you are not a predator" (translation here). I know it was a joke, but the place and the way makes are sometimes seen in the field genuinely hit me hard. I remember the sentence and the director face as she said it better than the other counsellors and the overall situation.
- rylando 3mo agoWhen I went to school for radiography (X-ray) in 2024 I got an additional scholarship for being a male in a female dominated field (healthcare), I believe it’s pretty common? I think it was apart of the FASFA or something, been a minute though. The more everyone the better! There are definitely times when it’s nice to have some guys with muscles around when it comes time to transfer a non ambulatory patient to an X-ray or CT table, but the ladies get it done too!
- nekusar 3mo agoYeah, hard pass. Nursing is a hardcore meat grinder, with companies worse than Uber taking advantage of nurses with algorithmic pricing scams, including credit checks to lowball. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/21/healthcare-nurses-gig-work-ai-apps https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/21/healthcare-n... And the real money at all is in RN. There's a reason the LPN is known as "low paid nurse". I'd rather head into the trades than nursing.
- testerteert000a 3mo ago3x12 hrs on 4x days off, or 6 on/8 off, TC pushes into mid/high 100's a few years in, often a union job, hands on outcomes, adrenaline if you want it, AI-protected enough (see: often a union job). Lot of nurse converts soon I think.
- dominotw 3mo agoand you can specialize and keep improving in your path, its not a deadend like lot of ppl belive.
- petcat 3mo agoYou have to actually like the work though. It's one thing just to recognize that it's a good career with a lot of security and good pay. But if you don't actually like the work, i.e taking care of people when they're at their worst, then you are going to be 100% miserable within 5 years and looking for another career change.
- testerteert000a 3mo agoAfter decades of clicking on different spots on screens and keyboards, the real stress in exchange for that, and now your peers in AI companies have found a way to unemploy you - there's a lot to like with hands on care that does something tangible that tech rarely does.
- petcat 3mo agoWell don't give up your career just yet unless you absolutely love the role of nursing. I'm sure you're thinking the grass is greener right now, but there's a reason why there is a chronic nursing shortage.... It can be a miserable job.
- testerteert000a 3mo agoAgreed! Stress in exchange for daily care outcomes I know I did and blood-and-guts adrenaline work has longed ticked the boxes. Tech used to tick the other boxes that I don't care much about anymore especially post AI.
- TheAtomic 3mo agoI don't get it. I'm in the rural south and male nurses are common (although it is facility by facility I imagine). Not as many as women, but still, it isn't something I notice anymore.
- pavel_lishin 3mo agoIt feels the same here - I've visited hospitals (as a guest, not a patient) quite a bit over the past year+, and I've noticed quite a few. I think women still outnumber men by at least 2:1, but it's not uncommon. I'm guessing the goal is to get that parity up to 1:1, or something close.
- goda90 3mo agoI see quite a few male nurses too, except for in the birthing and family care suites when my wife gave birth. All women across the several days we were in hospital, with the exception of a few male OBs and lab techs.
- fusslo 3mo ago> From 2022 to 2024, the percentage of men in nursing decreased from 11.2% to 10.4%.2 https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-workforce-fact-sheet https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-wo...
- drivebyhooting 3mo agoWhy can’t we have more doctors?
- dessimus 3mo agoThe issue for doctors isn't medical school but the bottleneck is residency slots available post graduation. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12256077/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12256077/
- EvanAnderson 3mo agoThat's an excellent link for getting down into the details. Thanks for posting it. > This editorial argues that the long-standing cap on residency slots, originating with the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, is the key structural constraint throttling the U.S. physician workforce. > In the 1990s, influential groups like the American Medical Association (AMA) and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) had become convinced the U.S. faced an impending “physician oversupply.” In March 1997, just months before the BBA’s passage, a consortium of medical organizations, including the AMA, went so far as to recommend reducing the number of residency positions by 25% (from ~25,000 slots down to 19,000) to stave off a surplus [4]. “The United States is on the verge of a serious oversupply of physicians,” the AMA and others warned at the time. (Not sure how I feel about the ideas the editorial poses about using ML in a supervisory capacity for residents, though...)
- antisthenes 3mo agotl;dr educational nimby-ism. And we all pay the bill for the shortage.
- EvanAnderson 3mo agoThe number of Medicare funded residency slots are limited by law. Medical schools won't graduate more doctors because residency can't be guaranteed. Who wants to be the med school who graduates doctors with >$100K debt and no path to licensure? In the 1990s the AMA lobbied congress to get the number of Medicare-funded slots limited. This was done in response to a projected "oversupply" of doctors (preventing a deflationary effect on doctors' compensation). That limit has stuck and now, even though the AMA is lobbying for the removal of the limit, the damage to the supply of doctors has been done and it's a process with a long pipeline.
- economistbob 3mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> They could simply ban medical institutions from mandating treatments for staff… Sorry, but if you want to take care of patients, you don't get to risk their lives unnecesssarily by refusing a flu shot.
- economistbob 3mo agoThere are lot of assumptions in that statement which may not be scientifically valid. Even if, the patient's life should not outweigh the medico's own. In a case where a medico choose that, they must choose to risk their life for a patient. The choice over ones life span ought not to rest with one's pay master as it does in American medicine.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> There are lot of assumptions in that statement which may not be scientifically valid. Uh huh. > Even if, the patient's life should not outweigh the medico's own. Their desire not to get a minor vaccination should not outweigh the survival of the person under their care.
- economistbob 3mo agoThat is a straw man.
- tracker1 3mo agoLook out for organizations in your state, similar to what happened with Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association (AzHHA)... I knew about it a few years before the 2007 settlement as my ex-wife an dMIL were working for a Nurse staffing company at the time.
- engeljohnb 3mo agoI'm a male healthcare worker (cardiac sonographer), and even though there are a lot more women, there were never any barriers for me because of my gender. If there's a shortage, it's because employers need to pay more, same as every other labor "shortage." Nursing is in demand everywhere, and not everyone has what it takes to do their work. If they could be making more money somewhere else, that's where they'll go. A couple of years ago, I compared my salary to all my friends in the same field, and found they were all making at least 25% more than me. I asked my work for more money, they said no, so I left. Last I heard they can't find anyone who'll work for so little except fresh grads who can't keep up with the heavy workload nor the high quality demanded by the doctors. And several nurses have told me similar stories. Just pay.
- bastawhiz 3mo agoCame here to say this. So many of my friends are male nurses. The thing that keeps them from sticking around is the pay. There's only so much crap you can take (literal and metaphorical) for a terrible salary. My housemate worked at UNC here in North Carolina. Not only was his pay terrible, he had to pay for on-campus parking. And if there was a sports game, he wasn't allowed to use the parking lot (having to park substantially further away and take a shuttle). The people running the system are so completely disconnected from the experience of being a nurse that they're destroying the industry from the top down.
- yoyohello13 3mo agoIt's kind of wild that our system seems to be specifically set up to exploit people who care. Sociopath who views people as just a barrier to their goals? Promotion to CEO, billion dollar bonus. Millions of tax dollars spent to bail you out of trouble. Empathetic person willing to literally put your body on the line for other? Shit pay, shit hours, one unlucky break away from destitution. What's even crazier is the majority of Americans seem to like it this way.
- nekusar 3mo ago> It's kind of wild that our system seems to be specifically set up to exploit people who care. Not at all. Caring has traditionally been woman pursuits. And you can underpay cause they care. There's a ton of academic studies under the terms of "emotional labor". Retail is emotional labor. Nursing. Education, childcare, health care, social work, hospitality, media, advocacy, aviation. And those jobs pay trash precisely because people (read: women) care. So they're exploitable. The jobs that you exploit others and forced not to care pay the most.
- VLM 3mo agoTwo comments about this being fake news, based upon my wife having two nurse friends: MDs are nationally organized and have a fixed career path. Nurses are more "you do you" career path and if a news story about shortages doesn't specify licenses assume they're scamming you. There's a big difference in supply/demand curves for a state licensed 3-month CNA vs a NP with 30 years experience. Flooding the CNA supply by lowering standards will not magically make 30 year experienced certified APRNs appear, at least not for another decade or two. Female coded jobs have very short career lengths. There's a reason there's a shortage, management makes everyone quit. Average nurse career length is only 8 years. Its not as bad as public school teacher but its pretty bad. Everyone knows the RN with 20 years experience makes six figures etc. Mostly because management forced 90% of her peers to quit and she'll all thats left and it takes six figure salary to keep her. The high pay is not exactly a glowing endorsement of working conditions LOL. Most whom enter the field will burn out long before they get high pay or "cool jobs". I would comment that everyone knows their field of expertise is mostly inaccurately described in mass media, but surely every other field is accurately represented. This situation unfortunately applies to all areas of expertise including nursing. Articles like this annoy nurses much like mass media portrays of "computers" and "computer people" annoy us with their inaccuracies.
- ryathal 3mo agoNursing has become a pretty bad job in modern times, and being a male nurse tends to have more downsides. Exploitation is high in the nursing field, support staff are non-existent, mandatory overtime is common, patient ratios are trending up, break times are non-existent in some areas, being assaulted is increasingly common. Being a male also tends to mean you are expected to do the harder or heavy lifting parts the majority of the time in addition to all the other problems the profession has.
- IAmBroom 3mo agoIn the US, nurses suffer some of the highest rates of job-related injuries. I know a male ex-nurse and a male ex-EMT, both of whom left the career due to injuries. That I know more male than female ex-nurses (ex- for this reason) suggests that male nurses are de facto called upon for heavy-lifting jobs in the hospitals. It makes sense, but those are exactly some of the situations that lead to OTJ injuries.