Let’s draft more men for the nursing profession
To the editor,
Yes, the nursing shortage is real, as indicated in your news article (Dec. 4) and the opinion article by Joseph Ferraro (Nov. 28). Nursing is a highly respected and trusted profession and action needs to be taken to recruit and retain nurses.
But the articles miss what should be an obvious but usually ignored part of the solution to the nursing shortage problem: Nursing is a female dominated profession. According to the National Nursing Workforce Study, only 9.4 percent of nurses are men and, as best as I can determine, there is no concerted effort to encourage males to go into the nursing profession. That is simply ridiculous. Imagine the outcry if only 9.4 percent of physicians, dentists, or clinical psychologists were female.
Nursing, like most professions stereotyped as “female professions,” has effectively been exempted from any federal or state affirmative action legislation and health care industry practices, and our elected public officials from both major political parties have ignored these laws when it comes to affirmative action for males.
The bottom line: As part of the solution to the nursing shortage, hospitals, nursing schools, nursing professional organizations, high school and college career counseling professionals and our elected officials, must design and carry out affirmative action programs to recruit and train men for the nursing profession. Why you may ask? Well, its common sense if we want to be serious about dealing with the nursing shortage; but its also the law, albeit ignored in practice.