Learning to “Deal” and “De-escalate”: How Men in Nursing Manage Self and Patient Emotions (original) (raw)
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Caring Moments and Their Men: Masculine Emotion Practice in Nursing
NORMA, 2017
ABSTRACT Theory on men and masculinities has emphasized practice— situated action—as the key site to analyze masculinity. Individual and organizational practices as well as cultural resources are sites to investigate gender dominance. Similarly, though more recently, theory on emotion has called for a shift toward an emotion-as-practice approach in which emotion is seen as both an outcome and resource situationally activated and embodied by constrained actors. Using empirical work on men in nursing, this article develops a synthesis of masculine and emotion practice. Bourdieu’s [(1990). The logic of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press] broader notion of social practice provides a link between the two fields. Reflections from men in nursing suggest a new masculine ideal centered on the emotionally adept man. Rather than signal an alternative form of masculinity that challenges gender dominance, these changes might signal a new hegemony—a reconfiguration of practices better suited to an era of post-industrialization. Economic shifts, including an increase in both the number of middle-class women in the labor force and the number of emotionally demanding, service-based jobs, may be the catalyst for a new ideal, particularly for white, middle-class men.
Emotion management and stereotypes about emotions among male nurses: a qualitative study
BMC Nursing
Background Nursing requires a high load of emotional labour. The link between nursing, emotional labour and the female sex, complicates the figure of the male nurse, because masculinity is associated with physical or technical (rather than emotional) and moreover is defined in contrast to femininity. Our objective was to understand how emotion management is described by male nurses who work in the paediatrics department of a Spanish tertiary hospital. Methods Qualitative descriptive study. The participants were selected through intentional sampling in the paediatrics department of a Spanish tertiary hospital. We conducted semi-structured interviews until reaching data saturation. We carried out a content analysis, using Lincoln and Guba’s definition of scientific rigour. Results We identified two key themes in the data: 1) Stereotypes related to the emotional aspects of care: Participants took for granted some gender stereotypes while questioning others and defended alternative ways...
The transcripts of 21 individual interviews and three focus groups of Canadian men in nursing generated by the SSHRC funded study “Contradictions and Tensions in the Lives of Men: Exploring Masculinities in the Numerically Female Dominated Professions of Nursing and Elementary School Teaching,” underwent secondary qualitative thematic analysis. Informed by the theoretical framework of masculinity theory, the study’s purpose was to describe how men nurses’ caring was conceptualized and expressed in their interviews. The contextual performance of masculinity and caring constituted the core theme, and a thematic map illustrated the relationships between eight performance sub-themes, two contextual sub-themes, and eight contextual elements accounted by this overarching theme. Consideration of the generated themes in the context of existing literature demonstrated considerable support for the study findings, and clearly identified the performance of masculinity as a significant influence on expression of caring by men nurses.
Gender & Society
Despite broader changes in the health care industry and gender dynamics in the United States, men continue to be a minority in the traditionally female occupation of nursing. As a caring profession, nursing emphasizes empathy, emotional engagement, and helping others—behaviors and skills characterized as antithetical to hegemonic notions of a tough, detached, and independent masculine self. The current study examines how nursing and related organizations “mobilize masculinities” in their efforts to recruit men to nursing. Analyzing recruitment materials, I assess the mobilization and construction of masculinities in the context of textual, spoken, and visual content. Results reveal how organizations simultaneously mobilize aspects of hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities through ideological gendering practices. I identify three distinct types of mediated mobilization: full hegemonic co-option, partial hegemonic co-option, and alternative construction of masculinities. Empirically, the study illustrates the content of nursing recruitment material aimed at men and the ongoing contradictions endemic to men’s entry into caring professions. Complementing existing structural and interactional approaches, the study advances theory on how the mobilization of masculinities operates as an ideological gendering practice at the organizational level.
The male of the species: a profile of men in nursing
Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2016
Aim: To establish a profile of men in nursing in Western Australia and explore the perception of men in nursing from the perspective of male and female nurses. Background: A project team, including some of the current authors, produced a YouTube video and DVD about men in nursing which led to further inquiry on this topic. Design: The study employed a non-experimental, comparative, descriptive research design focused on a quantitative methodology, using an online survey in early 2014. Method: A convenience sample incorporated registered and enrolled nurses and midwives in Western Australia. Findings: The range of data included demographic information and the respondents' perceptions of men in nursing were collected. Findings indicated that the main reasons for choosing a career in nursing or midwifery were similar for both genders. Common misperceptions of men in nursing included: most male nurses are gay; men are not suited to nursing and men are less caring and compassionate than women. Suggestions to promote nursing to men included: nurses are highly skilled professionals; there is the potential to make a difference for patients; nursing offers stable employment, professional diversity and opportunities for team work. There is a diminished awareness of opportunities for men in nursing and negative stereotypes related to men in nursing persist. Conclusion: The study produced recommendations which included: using the right message to target the recruitment for men and promoting a more realistic understanding of the profile and perception of men in nursing.
‘You Can’t Take It Personally’: Emotion Management as Part of the Professional Nurse’s Role
This study looks into the culture of nursing professionals in the present-day Czech health-care system at a time of personal, generational, and educational transitions (reforms), which have driven a change of organisational-cultural means in the relationship between two key professions: doctors and nurses. The article presents the results of a biographical study of nurses, paying detailed attention to their emotional labour in cooperation with doctors in accident and emergency ward settings. The study draws on the concept of organisational culture in practice/action, on a Goffmanian and Garfi nkelian ethnomethodology of scripts of interaction (rules, norms) in order to reconstruct the feeling rules that govern a nurse's emotional display and her role in cooperating with doctors. The article stresses the importance of emotion management as a substantial part of the gendered professional identities of health-care workers and discusses the situations when nurses' subordinate status requires a kind of stressful emotion management to keep the doctor-nurse professional relationship intact, which is not required from doctors. The study also presents a variety of coping strategies or practices normalising these morally questionable feeling rules and norms, which guide action as an integral part of the ordinary practices of the social organisation of the nurse's occupation in hospital settings. . Sports-Institutional Support for the Long-term Development of Research Organisations-Charles University, Faculty of Humanities (2014). 2 Both of the professions that this study is concerned with are gendered professions: in order to critically highlight the stereotype we use the corresponding pronouns: he, him, his for doctors and she, her for nurses. The stereotype of a male doctor and a female nurse is perpetuated through language, including the language of health-care statistics. The number of female doctors has been rising steadily [ÚZIS 2003[ÚZIS , 2013; however, when referring to the number of doctors, statistics persistently use only the masculine form of the noun (Czech has different suffi xes for a male and a female doctor), while only the feminine noun 'sestra' (meaning both 'sister' and 'nurse') is used to refer to nurses.
Heteronormative Labour: Conflicting Accountability Structures among Men in Nursing
Drawing on interview and diary data from 40 men in nursing in the US, the current study advances our theoretical understanding of how heteronormativity and masculinity intersect to shape men's performance of carework. Men in nursing are constrained by their accountability to stereotypes that they are gay and/or hypersexual, challenging their work in the feminized profession of nursing. As heteronormativity is embedded in the institution of health care, men nurses of all sexualities must perform additional labour on the job to reconcile their conflicting accountability to heteronormative stereotypes and occupational standards of care. We conceptualize this additional labour as heteronormative labour — work performed in order to strategically manage heteronormative expectations and realized through discursive, cognitive and emotional strategies. The experiences of men in caring professions remain rich for advancing theory on the relationship between sexuality and gender generally and in the workplace.
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In the Nursing Degree clinical teaching, gender stereotypes can influence the emotional experience of male students, with implications on their learning and competence's development in a health care area that is predominantly female, since it is consensual that the emotional dimension of learning can stipulate the experiences of caring. The development of emotional competence promotes a greater capacity for adaptive resilience in the face of stressful situations; consequently, to be emotionally competent is to be able to find solutions in internal resources that emerge from emotions (especially its management) and from the motivation of each individual. This interrelation between emotions and gender prompts the understanding of the male nursing students' emotional experience of provision of care in sexual and reproductive health. In order to understand this phenomenon, is proposed a research project with a qualitative approach, exploratory and descriptive. The data will be obtained from narratives written by nursing degree male student and also from clinical teaching supervisor nurses. Understanding students' emotional experiences in clinical teaching of sexual and reproductive health, related to possible gender stereotypes and restrictions to care in this area, leading us to understand how emotion itself manages these genderized experiences, what sense it gives them and how it incorporates them into learning in clinical teaching.
Masculinity and nursing care: A narrative analysis of male students′ stories about care
Nurse Education in Practice, 2015
Nursing education programmes and the nursing curriculum have been criticised for presenting an outdated and feminised description of care, which has had the effect of marginalising men, as well as hindering a more modern outlook for the profession. This article uses interview-based data from a qualitative study on Norwegian students' experiences in the first year of training. Using a narrative analysis method, the paper explores how male nursing students use stories to describe care and shows how their storytelling illustrates a way for men to negotiate their role in a feminised profession. The paper aims to deepen our understanding of the ways in which male students can challenge this historically female profession to broaden itself by including male-based caregiving as part of nursing care. In addition, the paper highlights the potential of stories and storytelling as a teaching and learning strategy in nursing education.
Although the number of men pursuing nursing education may be increasing in many areas, nursing remains a profession that is largely comprised of women (94% in Canada). As a result, nursing is profoundly influenced by societal constructions and performances of femininity, and this may also serve to inadvertently perpetuate society’s association of acceptable caring performances with femininities. There is some anecdotal and emerging evidence that suggests that men may be experiencing difficulty in many nursing education and practice contexts. A recent study by Gregory et al. (2009) demonstrated that men were disproportionately represented in the clinical learning contracts of one Canadian university, and anecdotal evidence suggests that attrition rates during nursing programs and following graduation may also be disproportionately high among men. Drawing on the findings of Kellett’s (2010) qualitative study, which articulated the contextual performance of masculinity and caring among...