Exploring gender barriers and advantages of Hong Kong male nursing students

Joint Event on 49^th International Congress on Nursing Care Plan & Health & 50^th World Congress on Men in Nursing

July 16-18, 2018 | Rome, Italy

Carmen Fung

Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Sexual diversity has been strongly emphasized in the global nursing development that needs to place more efforts in male nurse recruitment because males perceive unique skills and perspectives which are contributable to the profession and the society. Gender stereotype issues have long influenced studies of nursing students in the areas of self-concept, role identity and learning preferences. Hong Kong is lacking behind the global trend and we should arouse the public awareness and support our local male nursing development. However, many researchers reported that role strain, being isolated by nursing staff, suspicion about intimate touch and lack of knowledge in male nursing history were the major gender barriers in male nursing development. Role strain has been recognized as a significant potential barrier for men entering nursing. Callister and his colleague (2000) reported that male nursing students had higher levels of role stain than female students measured by the Sherrod Role Stain Scale when caring for pregnant women and their infants. Chan and colleagues (2013) reported that some male students preferred to avoid contact with female patients and not to get into trouble, while these perceptions may be due to their Chinese Confucianism belief that �??Men and women should maintain a proper distance from each other,�?� or due to advices by other nursing staff or worry about the previous news reports of sexual harassment in hospitals. The phenomenographic approach will be adopted in this study, which aims as understanding people�??s awareness or experiences of the gender barrier issues occurred in male nursing. This study tries to explore the role strains and gender barrier issues within the local male nurses and nursing students through verbatim reports of these interviews. Tentative dimensions of variation can be identified systemically and grouped into themes.

Biography :

Carmen Fung has her expertise in improving the nursing education for undergraduate nursing students and postgraduate nursing training specializing in emergency nursing. She has extensive clinical teaching experiences and simulation teaching.

E-mail: ckmfung@ouhk.edu.hk