By RORY MOORE
Tiger Media Network
Fort Hays State University’s Department of Nursing features a support group that offers guidance and career pathways for male nursing students in a female-dominated profession. Collectively known as Men in Nursing, the group brings male students together to encourage one another to pursue careers in nursing.
Senior Connor Peck serves as the current president of the group.
“We’re just here to support men in nursing at Fort Hays,” he said. “We also focus on things like Men’s Health, and solving the issue of men changing majors and not going through with staying in the nursing program.”
Peck strives to foster a positive community for male students like him, beyond a regular group.
“We have to have more pre-nursing [students] come this year,” he said. “There are not many enrolled, specifically males, in pre-nursing. But we’d like to have a community for us to talk about things like work in hospitals and mechanisms for coping with some of the things you see in nursing, since a lot of us are CNAs (certified nursing assistants).”
Men in Nursing challenges the stigma that persists over male nurses, who last year made up 11% of graduates in the Bachelor’s and Master’s programs at Fort Hays, and 23% of the Department of Nursing.
“It’s more of an outside stigma,” Peck said. “When you go to work [in nursing] there’s a lot of women there because that’s just the field you’re in. But it’s not a negative stigma; when we go there, we’re highly valued by the other nurses, and I think once you get into the actual field, it’s not actually as stigmatized as it is when you’re a student looking onwards.”
Peck has noticed that many men who enter the nursing field are influenced by personal factors like health or family.
“A lot of them have had either health struggles themselves or their families have,” he said. “They’ve also been around the hospital system and realized that this is something they want to do. They want to help people, so I think a lot of them just have prior experience [that influences them].”
Men in Nursing Secretary and FHSU senior Matthew Figger wants students to look past the limited male demographic in Nursing and focus on how they can save lives.
“People consider male nurses a minority,” he said. “It makes it fairly difficult to meet other men in the program, and whether or not you’re out of the program, just trying to meet other like-minded people with the same experiences as you [is important]. So, being able to have a group of male nursing majors or RNs (Registered Nurses) to be able to meet up and talk to get some mentoring and leadership.”
Figger appreciates the group for the connections and pathways to success it has created, saying it has allowed students past and present to connect and have success in the field.
“Our first guest speaker we had was in California, and he had a career that spanned from military over into being an RN, then nursing scientist to researcher, which was cool. [We’re fortunate] being able to connect with other people in fields that you’re either interested in or didn’t know you were interested in until now,” he said. “It’s something new you’ve never heard of, and that piques your interest more than anything else.”
Males in Nursing meets on the first Monday of every month in Stroup Hall 120. More information about FHSU Nursing programs can be found at https://www.fhsu.edu/nursing/academic-programs/.