The Norwalk Hour

Let’s draft more men for the nursing profession

- Lester Freundlich, Stamford

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.

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