faculty focus
They still call it women’ s work
Universities and nursing profession battle stereotypes in efforts to recruit men. By Antonia Maiolo
Gender stereotyping is a key deterrent keeping males from choosing to study nursing, researchers say.
Edith Cowan University clinical and international nursing co-ordinator Tania Beament says negative images and perceptions about male nurses affect how men in the profession are viewed within the community and healthcare industry.
“ This issue is directly [ affecting ] the ability of universities, other educational bodies and healthcare providers to recruit men into the profession,” Beament says.
Her comments come as the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report into the nursing and midwifery workforce reveals that of all the states and territories Western Australia has the lowest proportion of males working in nursing, with men comprising just 8.8 per cent of the industry’ s labour force.
Beament says there will soon be an increased demand for nurses as nursing services expand with the growing population.“ Attempting to recruit men into nursing is one way to address these issues and to provide a positive image to male nursing,” she says.
Nationally, the report showed, nursing and midwifery continue to be female dominated, as nine out of 10 nurses and midwives in Australia are women.
Darren Falconer, nursing and midwifery lecturer at the University of Notre Dame Australia, agrees that gender stereotyping discourages men from enrolling in nursing degrees.
He says the stereotypical notions of nursing being low paid and historically women’ s work are reasons why males aren’ t as likely to study nursing as females.
Current figures from Notre Dame show that just 85 out of roughly 700 nursing students are male.
Falconer says the university tries to promote nursing as a
This issue is directly [ affecting ] the ability of universities, other educational bodies and healthcare providers to recruit men into the profession.
career to men by sending male nurses to marketing events where other males are predominantly the target group, for example a boys’ school.
“ It is about educating them about a real career possibility and [ informing them ] that careers such as medicine are highly competitive and nursing is a great alternative or profession to fall back on if unsuccessful,” he says.
Both Beament and Falconer are part of a new research team set up by WA Health and the five WA universities to better understand the nursing profession’ s barriers, perceptions and attracters for males. The aim is to find out exactly why the number of male nurses is so small and make recommendations to increase it.
The team was set up following the production of the“ Men in Nursing” DVD released in late 2012, amid a growing awareness of the need to recruit more males. It consists of members from Edith Cowan University, University of Western Australia, Curtin University, Murdoch University and Notre Dame. The researchers are expected to present their findings towards the end of 2014.
A spokesperson from the WA Department of Health says promotional materials, such as the DVD containing messages and images of men, attempt to more accurately portray the reality of nursing to males. Men from a wide range of clinical backgrounds and environments, including metropolitan and country nursing, mental health and accident and emergency nursing are featured in the video.
“ The images of nurses and the profession suffer from time-to-time from unhelpful, negative stereotypes reflected in general media, film, television and the internet,” the spokesperson says.“ By targeting students in such a direct way, we are hoping [ to convince ] more young men to choose nursing as a career.” n
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