Gender issues

Nursng is traditionally a woman's role. Of the ten students I graduted with, only one was a man.
The male nurses I've had the chance to work with have been great, but occasionally the "gender issues" make working with them slightly odd.

Usually when it's only female staff working, our break room lunch time conversations revolve around fashion, celebs and kid and husband stuff. When the male staff are working with us, it can be a bit stilted. (And we generally pass on the discussions on how great Victoria Secret's semi- annual sale is--not that I think the guys would object to that topic of conversation.) Damn fine nurses, but a bit awkward nonetheless.

Because there are so few male nurses, patients also respond to them differently than they do to "you gals." Confused patients are notorious for mistaking male nurses for doctors. And even mentally competent patients often accept what the male nurses say with more authority than they do similar statements from me.

And after spending the last shift doing 1:1 nursing on a sweet elderly lady with dementia who yanked out her IV (twice!) repeatedly pulled off her heart monitor leads, and was spectacularly paranoid about allowing the staff to clean up her bloody sheets, give her oxygen, or give her important medications while screaming "you girls are all in this together!" at the top of her lungs, I really appreciate male nurses. Especially Billy and Jim *, who were kind enough to help me out by using their masculine charms to convince her to let them put in a new IV and get a quick shot of a handy antipsychotic.

*Any and all co-workers who may be mentioned in my blog have had names, ages, (occasionally genders) and other identifying details changed. Why? Because this blog is all about me.