Nursing News
Focus
Gender balance of nurses in UK countries
Male nurses
Female nurses
89.4%
93.4%
6.6%
Scotland
10.6%
88.7%
Northern
Ireland
England
90.3%
11.3%
Wales
9.7%
Case study
Dann Gooding: ‘Are you a wannabe doctor?’
Dann Gooding is a paediatric
intensive care nurse in
Birmingham, having qualified
in October last year.
He started his career in
healthcare around the age of
20, when he began doing
some care work in the
community. Following that, he
went into older people’s care
at a hospital in Devon, before
beginning his paediatric nurse
training in London.
As a student nurse he
created The Student Nurse
Project. The online support
community works to
empower students and newly
qualified nurses from around
the world, and has a big
following on Twitter.
Since qualifying,
Mr Gooding has become part
of the West Midlands Region
board at the Royal College
of Nursing to help better
understand policy and
influence. He has also worked
alongside chief nursing
officer Dr Ruth May to deliver
gender-neutral uniforms to
schoolchildren.
Mr Gooding told Nursing
Times about challenges he
has faced in the workplace,
simply because he is a man:
“I walked onto a general
paediatric ward in London
Nursing Times March 2019 / Vol 115 Issue 3
Case study
Iain Wheatley: ‘I was
told to join the army
to do nursing’
and a senior nurse looked at
me and said, and I quote, ‘A
male nurse? Are you meant
to be here?’. Later, I was
using a stethoscope and a
nurse asked me if I was a
‘wannabe doctor’.”
He said he thought these
kinds of misconceptions of
male nurses were prevalent
– especially for those who
work with children.
10
Iain Wheatley, a nurse
consultant in acute and
respiratory care at Frimley
Park Hospital, said he “always
wanted to be a nurse”.
As a child, he was a
member of Scouts and St John
Ambulance, where he said he
was always “very interested in
looking after people”.
“I was more interested in
the emergency side of it –
that’s what probably drove me
to look at nursing,” he added.
When Mr Wheatley was
near to finishing school, it was
suggested to him that he join
the army and do his nursing
there – so that’s what he did.
During his nursing career,
he has taken on a plethora
of roles – including posts
in intensive care, critical
outreach, research and on a
medical high-dependency
unit – and is currently a
consultant nurse, running
the respiratory service at the
hospital in Surrey.
When asked why he
thought there were fewer men
in the profession, Mr Wheatley
said: “I think the stereotype
that nursing is a femaledominated role is still quite
predominant.”
He added: “It’s probably not
something that directly
appeals to youngsters coming
up from schools into college,
who are thinking about what
careers they want to do.”
He explained that to help
recruit more men into
nursing, he would suggest
promoting male ambassadors
as leaders, as well as using
and publicising men in
recruitment campaigns.
www.nursingtimes.net
Nursing News
Focus
A history of men in nursing
EXCLUSIVE Megan Ford
megan.ford@emap.com
“The issue is,
we haven’t
raised the
profile of
nursing as a profession
for all genders”
Professor Mark Radford,
director of nursing
(improvement),
NHS Improvement
Your essential
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latest headline
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pledges to boost
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March 2019 Vol 115 Issue 3
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workplace conflict p25
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spinal cord injury p33
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“If we help
people to
understand
that there are
two sides to our story,
then it will be more
appealing to everybody”
‘I could see nursing as a
career option at an early
age – not all boys can’
David Foster, p13
nursingtimes.net £11.99
Professor Alison Leary,
professor of healthcare and
workforce modelling, London
South Bank University
FOCUS
Men in
nursing
Do we need a
gender-balanced
profession? p8-11
0 3
9
770954 776160
training and diplomas as their
female equivalents, they were
known as “orderlies” and were
paid about half of what
women were. In 1919, the
Nurse Registration Act was
passed, which saw legal
recognition granted to
nurses – although Mr Ross
highlighted men were put on
a separate register to women.
As well as their association
with the military, nurses who
were male were often seen
working in mental health
hospitals, highlights a 2016
RCN document, The Voice of
Nursing. It said men received
little training at these
hospitals, which meant that
male nurses were perceived as
less qualified and of a lower
status than female nurses.
It said this created a gender
stereotype in which men
worked in mental health
nursing and women worked
in general nursing.
However, the segregation
between male and female
nurses changed during
World War II when they
were brought together by the
armed forces and worked
together successfully, noted
the RCN paper.
Nursing Times March 2019 / Vol 115 Issue 3
When the war ended, many
male nurses opted to try to
take up nursing jobs as they
returned to civilian life.
Due to a nursing shortage
at the time, the government
encouraged the recruitment
of men into both mental and
general nursing aspects of
the profession.
It was around about this
time, in 1947, that the sex
segregation of nurse registries
came to an end, with men
being allowed education and
employment equity by the
1960s. Furthermore, in 1960,
men were also allowed to
become members of the RCN.
Also back in 1947, a trial
was conducted with four men
selected to be trained as district
nurses. They nursed only male
patients and did not wear a
uniform, changing into a white
jacket when in the patient’s
home (pictured, above).
By 1955, following a gradual
increase, men represented 10%
of NHS nurses, but this has
only reached around 11% by
2015 – and still hovers around
these levels today, with men
more heavily represented in
mental health and learning
disabilities nursing.
11
“We want to
work with
primary school
kids so they
start considering
nursing – it’s not just a
female profession”
Dr Ruth May, chief nursing
officer for England
“It’s just not
seen as a man’s
job and,
especially for
boys growing up, it’s not
seen as a career choice”
Rachael McIlroy, senior research
lead in employment relations,
Royal College of Nursing
“The derivative
of the word
comes from to
nurse a baby, so
it’s even in the language”
Craig Davidson, student nurse,
Glasgow Caledonian University
“We’re
challenging the
thought
process in
children who say, ‘I
didn’t know you could be
a nurse as a man’”
David Gwinnell, founder,
Men Into Nursing Together
www.nursingtimes.net
TOPFOTO.CO.UK
Historically, nursing has not
always been a predominately
female profession. Men mostly
made up the numbers of what
nursing was in the time before
Florence Nightingale.
That all changed with her
perception of nursing as a
female-only career, according
to David Ross from Liverpool
John Moores University, in the
journal Links to Health and
Social Care. Some scholars are
now also wondering whether
her apparent assertion that
“every woman is a nurse by
nature” could have a part to
play in why there are fewer
men in nursing today.
Dr Heather Whitford,
from the University of
Dundee, and Dr James Taylor,
from the University of the
West of Scotland, said last
year that perhaps Florence
Nightingale’s declarations
that nursing comes naturally
to women, has had a
“long-term unintended
consequence”.
Despite the current level
of men in nursing being
relatively low, they stated in
an article for the Royal College
of Nursing that this was not
always so. “A millennia ago it
was the norm for men, albeit
under monastic orders or in a
military context, to provide
care for the poor, sick or
injured,” they said.
According to Mr Ross,
the first nursing school in the
world included men only and
started as far back as 250 BC
in India. Male nurses cared for
troops during the Crusades in
the 11th century and by 1870 it
was still men that “staffed
field hospitals” in the FrancoPrussian War, he noted.
During World War I male
nurses served on the frontline,
helping the injured. But,
though holding the same
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