Wanted: Male nurses at NIU.

Kenneth Burns, associate chair of the nursing department, said the number of male nursing students is very low.

“About 3 to 4 percent of our students are male,” Burns said.

According to a March 2000 survey by the Federal Bureau of Health Professions, only 5.4 percent of registered nurses in the United States are male.

Senior nursing major Megan Domenico agreed that there are not many males in the nursing department.

Domenico said that in her graduating class of December 2003, “There are four men out of 40-some-odd students.”

Burns said many schools across the country have been trying to increase male interest in nursing.

“I would love to see more men in nursing than what we have,” Burns said.

So why did some males choose nursing as a career?

“There’s a lot of job opportunities right now, and it runs in the family,” senior nursing major Brad Kerr said.

There actually is a shortage of nurses in general, both male and female, Kerr said. He said many older-generation nurses have retired recently, and now, on average, there usually is only one nurse for every five patients. He said nursing has become a good career choice because nurses are in high demand.

“It’s tough to be one of the few guys in the program, but I think that in the future there’s going to be better opportunity for male nurses because there are so few,” Kerr said.

Ray Grass, a registered nurse at Rochelle Community Hospital, said that for him, there have been both benefits and drawbacks to being a male nurse.

“[Being male] might have been helpful with patients who are a little combative,” he said.

However, Grass said some women prefer a female nurse over a male one.

Kerr said sometimes a male nurse is needed for things like transferring a patient to or from their bed, or lifting heavy things.

Historically, nurses were originally male, Burns said, but the field of nursing became predominantly female over time.