Confessions of a Male Nurse

Nursing Career Statement

My interest in nursing started at a young age. When I was a baby, my mother was enrolled in nursing school, and would often take me to class with her. I grew up watching her work various jobs in the nursing field, eventually settling to work in home visiting. As a nurse, she was gentle and sensitive, but also diligent in her work ethic, a characteristic which fueled my ambition to become a nurse.  It was not only her patients that she cared for, but also for family and friends, a quality that I have internalized over the years.

My tendency to care for others comes naturally, and becomes apparent to everyone I have a chance to interact with. I know that nursing is the perfect career in which I can successfully care for patients on a personal and professional level.

I have watched my mother and other nurses around her work hard over the past fifteen years. I have heard the complaints, frustrations, and stresses that they experience.  Nurses work hard, sometimes even the hardest, and many times do not get the credit they deserve. I know that I can improve the conditions and experience of nursing.After finishing a nursing undergraduate program, I plan to gain experience working in both hospital and home visiting nursing. During this time, I hope to enter a graduate nursing program and use my background in entrepreneurship to bring innovation to the nursing field. Gaining education and experience as a nurse is a crucial aspect of this plan.

As a recognized young entrepreneur, I see opportunities for improvement in the nursing industry, such as more local and culturally considerate home visiting services, and even more foreign language training programs for hospital nurses. Being surrounded by my mother, co-workers, and fellow nursing students, I have learned that there are people are ready to improve care practices. They just need someone to bring them all together. I am that someone.  

Colombian Chemist

During my freshman year, I was taking Chemistry lab, first it was introduction, then organic for the second semester. I got lucky and happened to have the same professor for both semesters. I was one of the few guys in the class so me and him and this bro-thing going in. I wouldn’t exactly call it a bromance, but it was like broflirting where we understood each other in a room full of women. Not saying being around all those beautiful girls was bad, just sometimes you needed a bro.

As classes went on, we generally got to know each other. I became curious as to where he was from because of his heavy Latin accent. I asked and he told me Colombia, and that he was here in New York studying for his doctorate. I have never visited South America, and began asking him about all of the general stereotypes that I had heard about Colombia, or as he or any native speaker calls it, Ca-loom-bia.

Me: Are the women there nice?
Him: Yeah of course.

Me: Do they have nice asses?
Him: Sometimes.

Me: Do you miss the warm weather?
Him: Of course.

Me: Is it really dangerous in Colombia, with all the drugs and violence?
Him: Depends.

Me: Since you know chemistry, do know how to make drugs?
Him: Maybe.

Me: Like cocaine? What about meth?
Him: Oh meth is easy.

Me: So you could use all the equipment here in lab to make meth?
Him: Yeah.

Me: Lets start a drug business. You make it and I help you distribute and we split profit. Make some money on the side.
Him: I don’t do that.

-Male Nurse

Sexy Nurses?

I’ve been wondering where the idea of sexy nurses comes from. I mean yeah its traditonally a woman’s occupation and maybe men fantasize about their caretakers seducing them or what not (I mean I do too), but the tight latex outfits? I see some girls dressed up as nurses during role play in sex or for Halloween, but can you imagine real nurses wearing that?

I’ll agree it is sexy, but the functionality isn’t there. Imagine a nurse in the emergency room in that short dress and high heels. Blood would splatter all over there legs or stockings, and they’d be tripping over everything in their heels. And as a patient, would you listen to someone sexy or someone who is dressed professionally? Okay bad question since I’d prefer sexy over my health LOL.

But the reality is that all nurses are sexy. I mean look at me haha. They work really hard and bust their asses in those unattractive scrubs…which means at the end of the day those scrubs are coming off. Yes in a sexual way.

If my girl was a nurse, I’d pick her up from her shift at the hospital, take off her scrubs, give her a massage, and make love to her because I know how hard she works and how underappreciated she is. Hopefully she does it for me too.

-Male Nurse

Tear Your Brain Out

Ok well not really your brain, but rather a sheep’s brain. For lab, while learning about the nervous system, we had to dissect a sheep brain. You ever wonder where the sheep comes from? Is it a sheep that had a family, or was it raised on a farm just for dissection? Yeah sad story.

Anyway, it’s kind of creepy that its so similar to the human brain. I mean it has all of our cranial nerves (all 12 of them) and the same layout. Imagine your brain getting eaten by zombies and potentially replacing it with a sheep’s. What a bahhhhhhd situation!

I did pretty bad with the cutting. Orginally the professors told us we had to buy our own dissection kit, but whats the point if we only use it once in the semester and they have all the tools in the lab. If they didn’t, I’d just bring in my kitchen knife like Chef Ramsey (without all the cursing of course). At first I was really careful, afraid to do something wrong, but as my thought process developed, I decided that I was already paying for this via tuition so it was technically my sheep brain. I began to chop it, slice it and dice it. I ended up cutting away all of the cranial nerves I was supposed to observe.

My professor came over an saw what I did. Luckily she is a semi-hipster graduate student with lots of piercings and probably some tattoos, so she laughed with me. No harm done, the sheep was already dead or else it would’ve been malpractice.

-Male Nurse

vikigrl asked: when will you be done with pre reqs? and applying?

I will be finished with prereqs next semester by June, but I apply in March I believe, because I still gotta take my NLN in February. 

Knowledge Aftermath

And the journey continues. I’m almost finished with the first semester of sophomore year. Anatomy and Physiology is actually not as bad as I thought. I thought the skeleton and muscles tests were going to be an automatic fail, but that’s because I listened to other people who took it before. But, if you study diligently and take your time to learn the material, it really pays off. Even after the tests the information plays back in my head.

Let me give you a recent example. I was in an art store with a couple friends and we happened to run into a skeleton, almost the same one they had in A&P lab. I took it as a personal challenge like “Oh, really?” Then I just start showing off to my friends by naming all the bones until they got sick of it. I didn’t even know I had that power. No one man should have that power (Kanye!).

While they always tell you not to self-diagnose, I still kind of do. Since I know my muscles, I can target which ones are sore after certain activities. For example, after a trip to the gym, my upper leg was sore. After feeling around a little bit (not like that), I found that my vastus lateralis was sore, which is the outermost of the quadriceps.

I still find it weird that we don’t know much about our own bodies. Our anatomy should be basic education so we know how to take care of ourselves. I mean we know more about mountains and the solar system in elementary school than about ourselves. Somethings not right.

-Male Nurse

credit-themailman asked: With a nursing degree is it easy to receive jobs from anywhere? And is the competition high or low for becoming a nurse?

Competition is high in nursing school right now because that’s where all the jobs are. Nurses are always necessary, and there is so many fields you can go into with a nursing degree so in that sense you’ll always be able to secure a job. Nursing is universal and if you have trouble here, you can take it overseas. 

I am a nursing student. I study more than I sleep. I am never “done” with my homework because there is always more to do. I cover about 500 pages of info per week and I am expected to retain and recall it all at any given time. I may only go to class or clinical a couple days a week, but don’t let that fool you, I am always a nursing student with work to be done. I am giving up my time with family, friends, and myself to learn how to save other people’s lives. Please support and encourage that. If you are a nursing student or you know and love one, you know the drill - repost it!

(Source: kristinelootee)