Men In Nursing
Beyond the Stereotype: The Historical Role of Men in Nursing
Posted: September, 2026
Author(s):
Mark C. Hand, PhD, RN, CNE, FAAMN
Clinical Professor, East Carolina University School of Nursing
Zebulon, NC
Cooper Kleckner, BSN Nursing Student, East Carolina University School of Nursing
Zebulon, NC
Introduction: Nursing is often perceived as a historically female profession, but this image overlooks the long history of men as caregivers. Men have provided care in military, religious, institutional, and community settings for centuries. The modern gender imbalance developed largely through social, cultural, and educational changes accompanying nursing's professionalization, not from an absence of men in caregiving. Understanding this history challenges stereotypes and demonstrates that nursing has long included people of different genders.
Early Foundations and the Middle Ages: Organized caregiving existed in several ancient civilizations. The Sushruta Samhita, an ancient Indian medical text, described responsibilities of caregivers assisting physicians. Greek healing traditions included temples dedicated to Asclepius, while Roman military hospitals, or valetudinaria, provided structured care for injured soldiers. These examples show that caregiving was connected to medicine, military service, religion, and community responsibility rather than to one gender.
During the Middle Ages, monasteries and religious orders established hospitals for people who were sick, poor, or traveling. Male religious orders participated directly in this work. The Alexian Brothers cared for the sick during outbreaks of the Black Death. Military religious orders, including the Knights Hospitaller, Teutonic Knights, and Order of Saint Lazarus, also cared for soldiers, pilgrims, and people with chronic illnesses. Men and women contributed to care, with men especially visible in religious and military settings.
The Professionalization of Nursing: The 19th century transformed nursing as industrialization, medical advances, and expanding hospitals increased the need for trained healthcare workers. Florence Nightingale's work during the Crimean War helped establish sanitation, hospital organization, education, and standards as central features of professional nursing. The Nightingale Training School further strengthened nursing education and professional identity.
Professionalization also contributed to a gendered image of nursing. Victorian expectations associated compassion and nurturing with women, and many nursing schools in Europe and North America were created specifically for female students. These structures limited opportunities for men and reinforced the belief that nursing was "women's work." Men nevertheless continued providing care in military services, religious organizations, psychiatric hospitals, and veterans' institutions. Nursing became stronger as a profession while public perceptions of who could become a nurse narrowed.
Men in Modern Nursing: During the 20th century, men continued to encounter barriers to nursing education. Military conflicts again demonstrated their involvement in caregiving. During the American Civil War, men served as attendants and volunteers in military hospitals, and Walt Whitman's writings documented care of wounded soldiers. During World Wars I and II, men served as corpsmen, medics, and hospital attendants, providing emergency treatment, transporting wounded soldiers, and assisting physicians.
Outside the military, men worked in psychiatric hospitals, veterans' facilities, and public institutions. Many nursing schools, however, excluded men, restricted admission, or lacked housing for male students. As healthcare expanded and attitudes changed, more men entered nursing. Luther Christman became the first man to serve as dean of a collegiate school of nursing in the United States and helped establish the organization that became the American Association for Men in Nursing. Gene Tranbarger advanced nursing through education, leadership, scholarship, and advocacy, including support for male nursing students and efforts to eliminate gender-biased language in nursing education.
Men in Nursing Today: Men remain underrepresented in nursing, but their participation has increased since the 1970s. They now practice across critical care, emergency nursing, advanced practice, administration, research, and nursing education. Current efforts focus on reducing stereotypes, improving educational inclusion, and showing young men that nursing offers diverse professional opportunities. Teaching the history of men in nursing can provide role models, strengthen belonging, and help students understand how social expectations shaped the profession. Greater visibility can also help patients and communities recognize that nursing competence is independent of gender. Men currently comprise approximately 10% of the registered nurse workforce in the United States, compared with approximately 8% in 2015.
Conclusion: The history of nursing demonstrates that men have participated in caregiving across ancient civilizations, religious institutions, military systems, hospitals, and modern professional practice. Their visibility declined as nursing education and Victorian gender expectations increasingly defined nursing as a female occupation, but their participation never disappeared. Leaders such as Christman and Tranbarger challenged exclusion and expanded opportunities for later generations. Remembering this history corrects a persistent misconception and supports a more inclusive understanding of nursing. Nursing is defined not by gender, but by the knowledge, skill, compassion, leadership, and commitment required to care for others.
References:
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Smiley, R. A., Kaminski-Ozturk, N., Reid, M., Burwell, P. M., Oliveira, C. M., Shobo, Y., Allgeyer, R. L., Zhong, E., O’Hara, C., Volk, A., & Martin, B. (2025). The 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 16(1), S1–S88.
Fostering Diversity & Engagement: Student Leadership Roles as a Recruitment Tool for Men in Nursing
Posted: August, 2026
Somali Nguyen, DNP, CRNP, AGACNP-BC, shn@uab.edu
Assistant Professor, Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing
Nicholas Seay, BSN student, naseay@uab.edu
Pre-licensure Student
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing
Historically, the nursing profession has faced a significant gender gap, leaving a vital segment of the potential workforce underrepresented in clinical practice. Promoting gender diversity within nursing is essential to address critical nursing shortages and to align the clinical workforce with the diverse demographics of the patient populations we serve. Recruiting men into nursing introduces unique communication styles, varied perspectives, and valuable caregiving approaches. This diversity is vital to support healthcare expansion, advocate for vulnerable
patient groups, and advance evidence-based clinical practice in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape.
The American Association for Men in Nursing (AAMN) serves as a cornerstone for supporting pre-licensure male students. Nationally, encouraging men to choose nursing is increasingly critical due to the post-pandemic demand for competitive, stable careers and the evolving expectations of the caregiving role. However, professional organizations and local academic chapters often struggle with a lack of student engagement, a lack of student perspective, limited new ideas, and a shortage of structured mentorship opportunities. This deficit represents a major missed opportunity for student professional development.
Despite the clear advantages of having men in nursing, local chapters of professional organizations, such as the Birmingham chapter of AAMN, have historically struggled with minimal student engagement and limited participation. Without active student representation, local chapters suffer from a lack of fresh student perspectives, stagnant ideas, and inadequate clinical and academic mentorship connections. This gap hinders the professional development of pre-licensure male nursing students, who often feel isolated during their educational programs. To bridge this gap, chapters must design innovative leadership pathways, such as dedicated student board positions, to engage pre-licensure students, foster professional development, and create a sustainable, supportive peer-to-peer mentoring network.
How We Can Use Student Board Positions for Recruitment of Men in Nursing
To address these challenges, the Birmingham At-Large Chapter of AAMN implemented a structured leadership model by integrating pre-licensure nursing students directly into student board positions. This methodology operates across three key dimensions:
Fostering Shared Governance and Leadership Skills: By placing pre-licensure students on the board, chapters invite them to actively participate in shared governance. This responsibility allows students to gain and amplify their sense of self, while directly
augmenting the foundational leadership skills introduced in their undergraduate programs.
Structured Mentorship Chains: Incorporating student board members facilitates a unique, multi-directional mentoring environment. Students work closely with experienced faculty, clinical nurses, and peers to develop practical leadership, clinical, and personal skills. Rather than a single transactional relationship, this model establishes a continuous "mentorship chain" where professionals mentor students, who in turn mentor newer peers, successfully navigating the transition from mentee to mentor.
Active Engagement and Peer Outreach: Student board members serve as the primary drivers of outreach and community connection. They lead visible engagement events, such as educational tabling, community service projects (e.g., “CANstruction”), and interactive clinical skills demonstrations, such as teaching blood pressure measurement and physical assessment basics to younger students. Because peer-to-peer recommendations carry substantial weight, these student-led initiatives serve as highly authentic, first-hand recruiting tools to attract more men into the nursing pipeline.
The integration of student board positions within the local AAMN chapter yielded exceptional outcomes, highlighted by a 500% increase in student membership in 2024. This dramatic growth demonstrates that giving students a voice in leadership proves that professional organization involvement is a meaningful journey rather than a simple resume booster.
Ultimately, this initiative benefits everyone involved:
For Students: It increases feelings of connection, belonging, and community, while providing exposure to professional events, collaborative feedback, and research opportunities.
For Professionals: It offers a rewarding opportunity to pass on clinical expertise, act as visible role models, and network with the next generation of practitioners.
For the Profession: It enhances visibility, builds a stronger community, and drives advocacy to push the nursing field forward together.
By empowering pre-licensure male nursing students with real administrative and leadership responsibilities, academic chapters can foster a vibrant professional network that actively recruits, supports, and retains men in nursing.
References
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power of gender equity and diversity in the nursing profession. Journal of Advanced Nursing.
Prosen, M. (2022). Nursing students’ perception of gender-defined roles in nursing: a qualitative
descriptive study. BMC Nursing, 21(1), 104. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022-00876-4
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Strategies. Journal of Nursing Education, 59(7), 363–364. https://doi.org/doi:10.3928/01484834-20200617-01
Reframing the Narrative: Recruiting the Next Generation of Men in Nursing
Posted: August, 2026
Author(s):
Somali Nguyen, DNP, CRNP, AGACNP-BC, shn@uab.edu
Assistant Professor, Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing
Andrew Semegram, MSN, CRNP, FNP-C, ENP-C, asemegram@uabmc.edu
Director, Emergency Medicine Advanced Practice Provider Education
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing
The persistent gender gap within the healthcare workforce remains a complex challenge for nursing leadership. Recruiting more men into the profession is essential to building workforce capacity and directly improves clinical outcomes by aligning the clinician population with diverse patient demographics. Nursing is heavily stereotyped as a female-dominated occupation, an impression that continues to deter potential male applicants from considering it as a viable career path.
Recent academic data reveals that male representation in nursing has not only stagnated but experienced a modern regression. According to the National Nursing Workforce Survey published by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the percentage of men in the registered nurse (RN) workforce decreased from 11.2% in 2022 to 10.4% in 2024. Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that men comprise roughly 10% of the overall nursing workforce, pointing to a systemic, cross-cultural underrepresentation. Research demonstrates that career preferences and societal gender roles solidify early in adolescent development, making early-stage interventions critical. Middle school and high school students heavily weigh peer opinions and visible role models when evaluating future professions. Waiting until undergraduate enrollment to actively recruit men into nursing is an ineffective strategy because alternative fields have already captured their interest. Therefore, targeting younger cohorts during formative years is necessary to de-bias the profession and expand the male enrollment pipeline.
Traditional academic recruitment frameworks fail to reach young men during their primary periods of career consideration in middle and high school. Most institutional recruitment strategies focus exclusively on college-age applicants, leaving adolescent boys exposed to outdated cultural stigmas that portray nursing as a non-masculine, ancillary role. Because young men rarely encounter male nursing role models or high-acuity professional narratives early in life, they systematically self-select out of nursing pathways in favor of other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or emergency response careers. Without early, visible, and tactile exposure to the advanced clinical realities of the field, the recruitment pipeline for men will remain constricted, compounding national nursing shortages and limiting workforce diversity.
To overcome ingrained societal stereotypes, schools of nursing and professional chapters such as the Birmingham At-Large Chapter of the American Association for Men in Nursing (BCAAMN) can deploy targeted clinical demonstrations at public events and youth career events hosted by organizations such as Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA).
This experiential approach changes the narrative of nursing through three tactical dimensions:
Tactile Engagement with High-Acuity Skills: Incorporating interactive, hands-on simulations, such as the American College of Surgeons’ “Stop the Bleed” training, advanced wound care suturing models, and high-fidelity cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) drills, reframe nursing.
By emphasizing the intense physiological, technical, and life-saving components of practice, these demonstrations appeal directly to students interested in high-autonomy, fast-paced STEM disciplines.
Early Intervention in Middle and High Schools: Strategic outreach must deliberately focus on younger educational tiers. Partnering with middle school science fairs and high school career days allows male nursing instructors and students to provide early exposure. Giving a 13- or 14-year-old male student the opportunity to apply a combat tourniquet or analyze an automated external defibrillator (AED) reading breaks down the “women’s work” stigma before it solidifies into an absolute career barrier.
Visible Peer and Professional Role Modeling: Public events provide a powerful platform to utilize male nurses and pre-licensure male students as the primary presentation leaders. Seeing men operate complex clinical equipment, lead emergency protocols, and discuss advanced practice roles (e.g., flight nursing, nurse practitioner, or nurse anesthesia) provides younger students with an authentic blueprint for success. This representation normalizes male presence in healthcare, validating nursing as an elite, gender-inclusive specialty.
It must be noted that the strategies suggested above rely inherently on traditional masculine frameworks (e.g., high-acuity scenarios, autonomy, the tactical engagement of bleeding and death). This is purposeful, meant specifically to attract young men who have already absorbed some degree of the misogynistic notion of nursing as “women’s work.” Using this is by no means an endorsement of such notions; rather, it is leverage to initiate a paradigm shift with regard to the gendered perception of nursing. Bringing these young men to the nursing profession, although not a complete “fix” for the structured sexism that often exists in nursing (e.g., gendered pay disparities), can help them forge professional identities without the burden of gendered notions of caregiving. Early exposure to the full, relational reality of nursing, not merely its tactical entry point, gives this paradigm shift the opportunity to take root before gendered stereotypes solidify.
Diversifying the nursing workforce requires a proactive departure from passive collegiate marketing toward active, early-stage community engagement. When young men experience the physical, intellectual, and life-saving reality of nursing in middle and high school, systemic gender stigmas begin to dissipate. By investing in early-tier outreach and highlighting visible male role models, academic institutions can successfully cultivate a sustainable, diverse, and
resilient nursing pipeline equipped for future healthcare demands.
References
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