Men in nursing: ambivalence in care, gender and masculinity

Abstract

This paper briefly reviews some aspects of the history of men in nursing and suggests that for centuries men have been at the forefront of caring work, and that it was in the mid-nineteenth century when shifts in the nature of masculinity and femininity occurred, spearheaded by Florence Nightingale, which resulted in nursing becoming feminised. Drawing on techniques of oral history, this paper presents the experiences of two men who pioneered the return of men into nursing, and how their work changed in the course of their working lives. Both men saw a shift away from institutional hierarchies towards a more patient centred model, which accompanied comparable developments in their own thinking in different fields of nursing. There were differences in the work they did and how they constructed their pasts, yet there were also similarities in the way they developed their philosophy of caring for patients.