Men in Nursing - Historical Perspective

Historical Perspective

During plagues that swept through Europe, male nurses were primary caregivers, and in the 3rd century men in the Parabolani created a hospital and provided nursing care. It has been asserted, without proof, that the brotherhood was first organized during the great plague in Alexandrian episcopate of Dionysius the Great (second half of 3rd century). They received their name from the fact that they risked their lives (paraballesthai ten zoen) in exposing themselves to contagious diseases. In addition, they constituted a bodyguard for the bishop. Their number was never large. The Codex Theodosianus of 416 (xvi, 2, 42) restricted the enrollment in Alexandria to 500.

There were numerous other nurses that were male throughout the Middle Ages. St. Benedict started the Benedictine nursing order. The Alexian Brothers, in the 14th century, provided nursing care for the victims of the Black Death. These two organizations are still in existence today.

Military, religious, and lay orders of men continued to provide nursing care throughout the Middle Ages. Some of the most famous of these were the Knights Hospitalers, the Teutonic Knights, the Tertiaries, the Order of Saint Lazarus, the Order of the Holy Spirit, and the Hospital Brothers of St. Anthony.

St. John of God and St. Camillus de Lellis were both nurses who are now considered saints. St Camillus invented the symbol of the red cross and created the first ambulance service.

In 1783 James Derham, a slave from New Orleans, earned his freedom by working as a nurse. He went on to become the first black doctor in the United States.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), a poet and a writer, volunteered as a hospital nurse in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.

Nursing schools for men were common in the United States until the early 1900, more than half of those offering paid nursing services to the ill and injured were men. Yet by 1930, men constituted fewer than 1% of RNs in the United States." As they found other, more lucrative occupations, they left nursing behind.

In the past, men usually became nurses involuntarily "on to spot" in the midst of war, often religious wars, in an effort to save their fellow soldiers' lives. War was not the realm of women. This was the case until Florence Nightingale was allowed on the battlefield to minister to soldiers.

The American Assembly For Men in Nursing was founded in 1971. The purpose of AAMN is to provide a framework for nurses as a group to meet, discuss, and influence factors which affect men as nurses.

In Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Mississippi University for Women's single sex admissions policy for its nursing school violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the landmark opinion.

In the 1980-1990’s, "inflation, a shortage of nurses with the accompanying rise in nurses’ wage, as well as a change in gender attitude, brought many men into the profession."