Male nurses and the doctor’s favorite myth

A nurse who cannot efficiently prioritize their care, carelessly approaches their responsibilities, and either over or under communicates will struggle. They will have stress-saturated encounters with physicians and continue to improperly place passive blame.

The irony of it all, is that most physicians that trust your skills and your judgment end up treating you differently simply because they are comfortable enough to be ‘social’ with you.

Sure, men bond over ‘sports’ and other ‘manly’ things. Just like women bond over ‘fashion’ and other ‘girly’ things. I think one of the sources for this myth might have something to do with sheer numbers? I mean the majority of physicians are men (although not for long) and the number of men on a nursing unit is far smaller than women. So to single out a man and his working relationship with the physician’s just might be a statistical fact or anomaly (once again I’m just spit-balling here).

I’ve seen it balanced across the gender table. Physicians could care less what your gender is, what they care about is what kind of nurse you are, what kind of care you provide, and can they trust you.

Ask a fellow nurse, we all know the difference between a good and bad nurse. Need I remind you of the subconscious comments we all make to ourselves when we find out we are working with ‘that’ nurse or getting report from ‘that’ nurse.

During my career I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t want to be on the wrong side of that line. There have been many times where I have had to ‘check’ myself, and take a good hard look at what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. I think it had a lot to do with just growing into my role (once again.. just my opinion).

Preferential/better/different treatment (of any kind), in my humble opinion, is a sign of respect from one professional to another. It’s never been about your gender.