MEN IN NURSING: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE BY OMOLOLA ADAMS OLATAYO RN RM OSUN STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY, HEALTH CENTRE DEPARTMENT, OSUN STATE, NIGERIA.

MEN IN NURSING: HISTORICAL    

PERSPECTIVE

                                  BY

OMOLOLA   ADAMS   OLATAYO RN RM

OSUN STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY,

HEALTH CENTRE DEPARTMENT,

OSUN STATE, NIGERIA.

MEN IN NURSING: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Nursing today is much different from nursing practices years ago. The nursing profession is expected to continue changing all for the better of nurses and the patients they take care of.
The traditional roles of wife, mother, daughter and sister have always included caring for and nurturing other family members. This has been fact even from the beginning of time as women cared for infants and children. As a result, we can assume that nursing values and characteristics actually began in the home.
Throughout time women have also been called upon to care for others in the community who were ill. The care provided was mostly related to physical maintenance and comfort. This traditional nursing role has always involved humanistic caring, nurturing, comforting, and supporting.
Some brothers in arms provided nursing care to their sick and injured comrades. They built hospitals in which the organization and management set a standard for the administration of hospitals throughout Europe at that time.
The Knights of Saint Lazarus dedicated themselves to caring for people with:
• Leprosy
• Syphilis
• Chronic skin conditions
In 1836, when Theodore Fliedner reinstituted the Order of Deaconesses, opened a small hospital and training school in Kaiserswerth, Germany where Florence Nightingale received her training in nursing.
Florence Nightingale is considered the founder of modern nursing. She was influential in developing nursing education, practice, and administration. She published “Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not,” first in England 1859 and in the U.S. in 1860. This publication was intended for all women and brought her the recognition of nursing’s first scientist-theorist.
Florence Nightingale foresaw nursing that included public health and health promotion roles for nurses. Her vision was only partially addressed in the early days of nursing. The early focus was more on developing the profession within hospitals.
Ms. Nightingale saw her role in nursing as a spiritual calling from God. She was born into a wealthy family who did not approve of her ambitions of nursing. Her contributions have been well documented. Her greatest achievement was probably in nursing education. She developed the Nightingale Training School for Nurses that opened in 1860 and has served as a model for other training schools. Graduates of these schools traveled to other countries and managed hospitals and institute nurse-training programs.
Religious values have dominated nursing throughout its history. Some of these values include:
• Self-denial
• Spiritual calling
• Devotion to duty
• Hard work
The nurse’s commitment to these values often resulted in exploitation and not much in the way of monetary rewards or professionalism. It was a common belief for many nurses themselves to feel it inappropriate to expect economic gain from their “calling” into the nursing profession.
Days of War for the Nurse
Throughout our history, wars have always created a greater need for nurses. Florence Nightingale addressed a problem of inadequate care given to soldiers during the Crimean War (1854-1856). Nightingale and her nurses transformed the military hospitals by setting up sanitation practices like hand washing and washing clothing regularly. She is also credited for performing miracles. For example, the mortality rate in the Barrack Hospital in Turkey was reduced from 42 to 2 percent.
Other influential female nurses in our history include:
• Harriet Tubman: Known as “The Moses of Her People” for her work with the Underground Railroad during the Civil War
• Sojourner Truth: Abolitionist, Underground Railroad agent, preacher, and women’s rights advocate and a nurse for over 4 years during the Civil War
• Clara Barton: A schoolteacher who volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War. She organized the nursing services and is noted for her role in establishing the American Red Cross. She persuaded Congress in 1882 to ratify the Treaty of Geneva so that the Red Cross could perform humanitarian efforts in time of peace.
• Lillian Wald: She is considered the founder of public health nursing
• Lavinia L. Dock: She was a feminist, prolific writer, political activist, suffragette and friend of Wald. She participated in protest movements for women’s rights that resulted in the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted women the right to vote.
• Margaret Higgins Sanger: She was imprisoned for opening the first birth control information clinic in America and is considered the founder of Planned Parenthood. She had experience with a large number of unwanted pregnancies among the working poor that lead her to be very instrumental in addressing the problem.
• Mary Breckinridge: She established the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS), worked with the American Committee for Devastated France to distribute food, clothing and supplies to rural villages and took care of sick children. When she returned to the United States she and two other nurses began the FNS in Leslie County, Kentucky, and started one of the first midwifery training schools in the U.S.

During plagues that swept through Europe, male nurses were primary caregivers. In the 3rd century, men in the Parabolani created a hospital and provided nursing care. It has been asserted, without proof, that the brotherhood was first organized during the great plague in Alexandrian episcopate of Dionysius the Great (second half of 3rd century). They received their name from the fact that they risked their lives (paraballesthai ten zoen) in exposing themselves to contagious diseases. In addition, they constituted a bodyguard for the bishop. Their number was never large. The Codex Theodosianus of 416 (xvi, 2, 42) restricted the enrollment in Alexandria to 500.

There were numerous other nurses that were male throughout the Middle Ages. St. Benedict started the Benedictine nursing order. The Alexian Brothers, in the 14th century, provided nursing care for the victims of the Black Death. These two organizations are still in existence today.

Military, religious, and lay orders of men continued to provide nursing care throughout the Middle Ages. Some of the most famous of these were the Knights Hospitalers, the Teutonic Knights, the Tertiaries, the Order of Saint Lazarus, the Order of the Holy Spirit, and the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony.

St. John of God and St. Camillus de Lellis were both nurses who are now considered saints. St Camillus invented the symbol of the red cross and created the first ambulance service.

In 1783 James Derham, a slave from New Orleans, earned his freedom by working as a nurse. He went on to become the first black doctor in the United States.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), a poet and a writer, volunteered as a hospital nurse in Washington D.C during the Civil War.

Nursing schools for men were common in the United State until the early 1900, more than half of those offering paid nursing services to the ill and injured were men. Yet by 1930, men constituted fewer than 1% of RNs in the United States." As they found other, more lucrative occupations, they left nursing behind.

In the past, men usually became nurses involuntarily "on to spot" in the midst of war, often religious wars, in an effort to save their fellow soldiers' lives. War was not the realm of women. This was the case until Florence Nightingale was allowed on the battlefield to minister to soldiers.

The American Assembly For Men In Nursing was founded in 1971. The purpose of AAMN is to provide a framework for nurses as a group to meet, discuss, and influence factors which affect men as nurses.

In Mississipi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982), the U.S Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Mississippi University for Women's single sex admissions policy for its nursing school violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the landmark opinion.

In the 1980-1990’s, "inflation, a shortage of nurses with the accompanying rise in nurses’ wage, as well as a change in gender attitude, brought many men into the profession."

More men are joining women by entering the nursing profession. "Study after study demonstrates that men come to the nursing profession for the same reasons women do. They want to care for sick and injured people, they want a challenging profession, and they want reasonable job security with good wages".

As many Western nations are facing a shortage of nurses, many governments and nursing schools are actively recruiting more men as nurses. In example, when the University of Pittsburgh increased its admission requirements for its nursing program, the number of male applicants spiked significantly.

Spokesman Thomas Holly stated on behalf of all male nurses in University of Limerick that they are currently celebrated in all hospitals throughout the Mid-West of Ireland and female nurses continually look forward to seeing male nurses arrive on wards.

Men are commonly seen working in the US Armed Forces and in VA medical facilities.

 THERE WERE SOME IMPORTANT MEN IN THE FIELD OF NURSING.

1: John Ciudad (1495-1550) founded the order of the brothers of St. John of God or the Brothers of Mercy in (1538). He opened a hospital in Grenada and asked a group of friends to assist in providing care to the mentally ill, homeless, crippled, derelicts, and abandoned children. Men of this order also visited the sick in their homes.

2: St. Camillus de Lellis (1550-1614) founded the Nursing Order of Ministers of the sick. Men of this order cared for the dying, people stricken with the plague, and alcoholics. St.Camillus opened a hospital for alcoholics in Germany.

3: James Derham was an African American man who worked as a nurse in New Orleans in 1783. He was able to save enough money to but his freedom from slavery. He went on to become the first African American physician in the United States.

4: Walt Whitman (1819-1892), poet and writer, served as a volunteer hospital nurse in Washington, DC during the Civil War. He recorded his experiences in a collection of poems called "DRUMTAPS" and in his diary, "SPECIMEN DAYS and COLLECT".

5: The first man to be commissioned in the Army Nurse Corps was Edward Lyon, a nurse Anesthetist from Kings Park, NY. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on October 10, 1955.

                                   

Resources

 Connie Limon 2007, The Nursing Profession; A Historical Perspective www.selfgrowth.com/articles/The_Nursing_Profession_A_Historical_Perspective retrieved 19th January,2014
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing retrieved 19^th January, 2014
www.the-male-nurse.com/2008/12/history_of_men_in_nursing.html Referred Academic Journal www.iiste.org retrieved 20^th January 2014.