Number of male nurses triple; average pay: $60,700/yr. Female nurse average pay: $51,100.

[rainbow4321]

19. Having been a nurse for 20-some years

I can tell you that what I have seen is that the majority of male nurses don't stay on the medical-surgical floors very long...they may start off there but they are up front from the get go that they want to work in a specialty area like the ICU or they start eyeing a management role so they can get away from the bedside.
One of my (male) managers) told me a few months ago that going into nursing was "just a way to get to where I wanted to go"..in his case, as little time at the bedside as possible, get a management 8 to 5 job while going back to school to get his masters in like healthcare management or something...yeah, he can sit in front of me and give a totally boring rant about nursing theories and and papers he is writing to hand in but, I kid you NOT, the very few times he was FORCED to go back out to the floor to do a COUPLE of hours of bedside care, he was totally fucking clueless. He had to come to me to be told how to flush an IV line...came to me also to make sure he had all the right "supplies" to change a patient's bed linen. And he admits it, too..he knows he makes an incompetent nurse and has NO skills. He will only HALF joke with a "well, I will keep them ALIVE until so and so gets here to take over".
And I don't mean to say that the behavior is just guy-related..I have seen women do the same..male or female,it scares the HELL out me when I see someone as clueless as him venture back into the trenches when they are really pencil pushers who just went into nursing with no real intention to stay in the trenches very long.

I worked with a male LVN the other day who said he was going back to school...we asked if he was going for his RN license...he said, nope, I am going to get my respiratory license so I can get in and OUT of a patient's room quick..and that way, he said, when a patient "needs" anything, he can respond "I'll let your nurse know" and be outta THERE!

I think the article does a (typical) crappy job of "a nurse is a nurse is a nurse". Break the damn categories down..med-surg vs ICU vs ER vs Management (non-bedside nurses).