A priority for the American Association of the Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is to attract students from underrepresented groups, most particularly men (AACN, 2017). The National League of Nursing (NLN) reports 15% of Baccalaureate in Nursing (BSN) students in the United States are men (NLN, 2016). Unfortunately, the national attrition rate of these male nursing students far exceeds female nursing student attrition rates (MacWilliams, Schmidt, & Bleich, 2013). Kirk, O’Lynn and Ponton (2013) contend that barriers for men in both traditional and online nursing education environments are pervasive. However, studies focusing upon these “barriers” are scarce. The purpose of this research is to explore the professional role development of male nursing students utilizing mixed methods to better understand and predict variables conducive to their success.
Methods:
Giordana and Wedin (2010) found abnormally high anxiety levels among male nursing students when compared to female nursing students. After successful Institutional Board Review, School of Nursing faculty from a rural Midwestern university conducted qualitative exploration of these anxiety levels through gender-specific focus groups of 34 nursing students. Findings suggest professional role development is difficult for male nursing students. Researchers proposed that students who struggle with owning their professional role, may give up on nursing school and fail more often than other students. Men in the study reported that what exactly a nurse who is a man does or is, is vague. In fact, as one research participant declared: “It was never like someone ever looked at me and said oh well, clearly this gentleman here should be a nurse whereas my mom would always tell stories of her mother saying oh you should be a nurse” (unpublished research data, March 16, 2016). Even after getting into this rural Midwestern American nursing school, male nurse role models were not easily found at clinical sites consequently working with a male nurse professional role model prior to graduation eluded most participants in this study.
Exploring the nature of Midwestern male nursing student professional role development as operationalized by self-reported competence levels as novice nurses and satisfaction with career as a nurse, served to loosely triangulate the research. “Examples of triangulation, or mixed methods, are as varied as there are research studies” (Heale & Forbes, 2013, p. 98). Following successful Institutional Board Review, research utilized the New Careers in Nursing (NCIN) data set of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF, 2016). NCIN was a joint scholarship effort begun in 2008 by both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the American Association of College of Nursing (AACN) designed to address the nursing shortage within the United States while also increasing the diversity of nursing professionals (RWJF, 2016). This data was gathered from 130 programs of study in the United States, including 3500 accelerated nursing students at three points in time and covering over 400 variables. A variable specifically asking about professionalism or professional role development as a nurse was not included in the NCIN dataset.
Results:
Secondary data from this NCIN data included Midwestern responses from male nursing students numbering 191 with nearly 25% identifying as non-white. Nearly 14% of these nursing students withdrew from the program in which they had enrolled. Limited and varying numbers of nursing students completed all aspects of the NCIN dataset questions. Descriptive statistics were utilized as well as logistical regression analysis to predict the self-reported competence level of novice male nurses. Nearly 25% of Midwestern male novice nurses reported agreeing with being a competent nurse, while 70% reported tended to agree with being a competent nurse. Gender did not correlate with competence leveling as a novice nurse. Being assigned a mentor, participating in a leadership program both before and during the nursing student experience and availability as well as effective relationship with faculty were all significant in predicting self-reported competence as a novice nurse (p <.05). Further analysis revealed the importance of mentoring with satisfaction with career as a nurse.
Conclusion:
Aligning quantitative findings with qualitative suggestions serves to triangulate and strengthen the data. If nursing faculty especially in Midwestern America understand better how to get these men to identify and connect with becoming professional nurses perhaps their withdrawal rates would decrease. With the nation needing over a million new nurses by 2024, not only attracting men to the nursing profession but retaining these care providers through school and beyond is paramount (Grant, 2016).
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