Male Nursing Stereotypes

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In today’s society the male nursing profession is sometimes portrayed negatively in the media. Male nurses are often viewed as more aggressive, incompetent and working in a predominantly female profession. The media source chosen was a movie called “Meet The Parents” (2000) The film was based on the idea that a male nurse would go and meet his future wife’s family, and upon meeting the family, things took a turn for the worse. reinforced the common male nursing stereotypes portrayed in the media.
In the beginning of the movie Ben Stiller who plays the main character Greg, portrays a professional male nurse who loves his job. He is respectful to his patients, and has an outgoing personality. He dresses in the proper nursing attire, and …show more content…

When he is not shown respect, Greg tries to leave but gets caught in an airplane when his luggage would not fit in the overhead compartment. The stewardess than proceeds to say that she would take his luggage, but earlier in the movie they had lost his luggage on a previous flight. Greg than proceeds to get aggressive and begins yelling “bomb” repeatedly on the airplane, which results in getting himself detained. Finally, Greg stands up for himself and asks if Jack would lay off with the nurse jokes, and Jack replies lightheartedly, “could you consider another profession?” Jack’s character presented the fact that there are people who still have the mentality that it is not okay to be a male in the nursing profession. Current working nurses or students studying to become a nurse this could be considered offensive because of the view it portrays on the ‘male nurse’. When I first watched the movie five to six years ago it severely impacted my view on nursing because it showed me that as a male nurse in today’s society would be set apart and judged to a certain extent due to gender. Male nurses would have to fight for the equality and respect from certain demographics throughout their entire career. There is also the issue that nurses …show more content…

The articles were to be peer reviewed, and have a minimum of one nurse as an author. The research was completed on the EBSCO online research database using the Cumulative Index to Nursing database and Allied Health Literature with full text. The concept of nursing being a predominantly female profession is currently being influenced by the media, and society as a whole (Lou, Yu & Chen, 2010) This is being portrayed through movies with how frequent you see females as nurses within television series but you rarely or never see males. When you finally see the ‘male nurse’ they are usually portrayed negatively such as portrayed in this film. Jack tries persistently to persuade Greg to switch career paths because he considers it a female line of work. Constant portrayal of nursing being a female role in movies and television shows is leading to the population being misinformed about the male nursing profession. The truth is that males have an equal role in the nursing work force. David Stanley stated in an article that male nurse’s are considered to be aggressive. (2012) When Greg got upset, and started yelling, “bomb” on the plane, he had to be detained. This could be considered portraying a male nurse as being an aggressor. This proves the statement previously stated about males could be viewed as more aggressive. Just because there is a correlation of males nurses

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