However, with a spike in demand, coupled with the regional government’s desire tocapitalize on the traditional medicine, there has never been a better time to get a job at atraditional Mongolian medicine hospital.
“All my classmates have already found jobs,” said Namula, 27, who graduated fromInner Mongolia College and interns at the Inner Mongolia Zhongmeng Hospital inHohhot. “Even those who graduated a couple of years ago could not get positions asdoctors (at mainstream hospitals).”
August 25, 2010
Prejudice forcing men off wards
Traditional breadwinners get neither high salary nor status.
Peng Yining in Beijing reports.
Li Zunzhu saw another male colleague quit in April 2010. The resignation was notthe first he has seen during his nine-year career as a nurse at Peking Union MedicalCollege Hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) - and it is unlikely to be the last.
His colleague decided to leave the job shortly after his girlfriend of eight years calledoff their wedding because her family refused to let her marry a male nurse.
“The girl’s parents thought it was disgrace for a man to do nursing work that is menialand pays badly. My colleague was depressed and quit soon after the break-up,” said Li, 31,who is now one of only three men still working in the 60-nurse ICU department.
As the nation prepares to celebrate International Nurses Day on May 12, healthindustry experts and those working in the profession said that little has changed in attitudestoward the country’s male nurses, many of whom still experience severe discrimination.
“The discrimination comes from people’s prejudices about the profession,” said YingLan, deputy director of the Beijing Nursing Association. “People generally think nursingis a degrading job that requires no technical skills and offers a low salary. Women areconsidered more adept at doing this kind of work; people can’t accept a man toweling apatient’s body or cleaning up after them.”
When Li was enrolled in Peking Union Medical College’s school of nursing in 1998,he was one of only two men from 400 students. “I was surrounded by women. I felt like aboy who’d accidentally been sent to an all-girls school,” he joked.
He recalled that when the class was divided into groups to practice injecting needlesinto each other’s arms, none of his female classmates were willing to partner up with him.
“I had to practice with the only other guy in the class,” said the lean, 1.8-meter-tall man,who hails from Shandong province. “Maybe the girls thought us men were too clumsy andwould hurt them.”
The two men quickly became the most popular test subjects ahead of the finalinjection examination as the girls realized male veins are thicker and therefore easier to findwith a needle.
The real pain, however, did not begin until after Li graduated in 2001 and startedhis job as the first male nurse to ever work in the ICU at Peking Union Medical CollegeHospital, one of China’s most renowned hospitals.
People were always surprised that there were men working as nurses and some femalepatients refused to allow him to perform any gynecological check ups, he said.
For almost a decade, Li, whose wife is also a former nurse, has regularly worked morethan 13 hours a day giving injections and taking blood samples, fitting catheters, andhelping patients to wash and use the toilet, among many other things.
No matter how hard a nurse works, though, they will never receive the same respect asa doctor, he said. “People despise nurses because they believe the work is of a low status. It’seven more shameful (in their eyes) when a man does this job,” he said.
During his first couple of years in the job, Li said he used to dodge the questionwhen patients asked him if he was a doctor (male nurses do not wear caps like their femalecolleagues to distinguish them from the doctors). “Maybe I’m too sensitive but I could seethe pity in their eyes when I told them I am not a doctor but a nurse.”
Supporting stars
Nursing is far more complex than simply giving jabs and dispensing medicine, saidYing, who was a male nurse in the 1970s.
Not only do they need to report every detail of a patient’s condition to the doctorso they can draw up a comprehensive treatment plan, they are also vital in the recoveryprocess as they need to make sure a patient is developing both physically and mentally.
All nurses require intensive professional training and some even have master’s degreesfrom medical schools, added Ying.
After three years in school, Li got his nursing certificate by passing a strict exam. Hehad to intern in the ICU department for more than a year before he was allowed to workon his own. During that period, he learned to evaluate the patients’ conditions throughrecognizing and analyzing data from various medical equipment and monitors, and todispense medicine under the guidance of a senior nurse.
Now Li has his own interns to coach, and said he makes each one recite the name ofthe drug and dosage every time they provide an injection. “The smallest mistake is likely tobe fatal,” he said.
Women are generally regarded as more gentle and better at comforting people.