Men and Nursing :: Nursing Essays

Nursing is a profession that I have always been fascinated with. Nursing is defined as "health promotion, health maintenance, health restoration and providing care to the sick and dying" (Kozier and Erb). There are five values essential to nursing, which include altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity and social justice (AACN). Nursing is a profession in which the nurse uses caring as a central concept. Some other characteristics of the nursing profession include art, science, advocacy, and offering holistic care. Nurses use critical thinking in order to problem solve because every patient is unique. The nursing process when assessing a patient includes, data collection, analysis, planning, implementing, and evaluation. Nurses need to be able to deal with change in stressful, fast paced, hectic environments. The treatments and technology is constantly changing therefore nurses need to be able to make quick and important decisions. When people think of a nurse they normally come to the conclusion that most nurses are women. I would have thought the same, due to the qualities I have mentioned. I would like to research why men are entering the nursing profession. I feel that a male would join the profession because of the hours a nurse works. Men who like to fish and hunt can work as a nurse three days a week full time and have four days to enjoy leisure activities. The nursing profession is drawing more men into the field and usually thought for the same reasons as women. By a series of an observation, a survey, an interview, and a personal history, I will prove that men join the nursing profession because of money. In the observation I sat in a waiting area of a cardiology floor in a hospital. I noted the nurses â€Å"running around like chickens with their heads cut off,† as patients were coming back from cardiac procedures such as a cardiac catherization. The floor nurses were mostly women and only a few men filled the hallways. The stress on the floor was high; you could just feel the tension building as the floor became full with patients. In the observation I was looking for how many male nurses were working and what there reaction was to the stress.