“Y’all can ask the doctor, the pharmacy, all of the people I asked for information on this medication that I tried to confirm the dose,” Molly said.

“Yes, but you were the one who gave the medicine,” the nurse manager said.

Molly didn’t confront the doctor because she learned that the doctor told the patient what had happened and had accepted responsibility (which didn’t change the fact that the incident was documented in Molly’s file).

At another hospital, Molly remembered when a doctor ordered the wrong medication for a patient. As per protocol at that hospital, the patient’s nurse acknowledged the order on the computer and clicked a button when she had given the medicine. Later, when the nurse returned to the computer to update the patient’s chart, she saw that the medication order, which she had already administered, was gone.

In the fallout, the doctor claimed he had never ordered the medication. The hospital fired the nurse. The nurse responded by filing a lawsuit, forcing the hospital to research the records. After four months, the hospital admitted that the doctor had lied, and agreed to rehire the nurse. “But the doctor is still there! He wasn’t fired!” Molly said. “They blindly trusted the doctor over the nurse. That kind of thing happens all the time.”

Chapter 9

What Makes a Hero

:

Why Nurses Do What They Do

“Nursing is a calling, a lifestyle, a way of living.”

—The Nightingale Tribute, developed by the Kansas State Nurses Association to honor deceased nurses

“Nurses are the glue that holds healthcare together. They live to assess, treat, coordinate care, and advocate for patients, and they do it all under the most direct of pressures with the littlest of concern for their own health or well-being. There is no one less self-concerned than a nurse. They are the implementation masters of coordinated care.”

—a Virginia women’s health nurse

“It’s incredibly fulfilling. As a nurse, you have the opportunity to provide hope and comfort to people on what is often one of the worst days of their lives. I feel whole when I am caring for others, teaching them to care for themselves, and helping them heal.”

—a Washington, DC, cardiothoracic surgery nurse

“I’m Right There Wearing a Dress”: Why Murses Are Nurses

At six feet two inches, with 230 pounds of muscle and a 32-inch waist, WWE wrestler Dean Visk was enjoying a successful second career when he decided to leave professional wrestling because he missed nursing so dearly. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m a healthcare professional.’ The WWE is wonderful, but I felt like nursing was my calling,” he said.

Visk originally got into nursing because, as an amateur bodybuilder, he was interested in the prerequisite anatomy, chemistry, and biology classes. He was a full-time behavioral health nurse for five years before moving to Cincinnati to work part-time as a nurse while training for the WWE. He trained for four more years before the WWE offered him a contract. The other wrestlers didn’t mock him for working in a predominantly female field; instead, he said, they were impressed that he had such a stable career to fall back on.

Now Visk is an outpatient facility nursing director who continues to wrestle on the side for charity functions (and tells patients who recognize him, “I don’t fight anymore; I heal”). “I’ve had nothing but positive experiences in nursing,” he said. “If it’s a sisterhood, then I’m right there wearing a dress with all the other nurses. I’ve always been taken into the sisterhood without any issues.”

Out of 3.5 million nurses in the United States, approximately 330,000 are male. The highest percentage is concentrated in anesthesia: 41 percent of CRNAs are male, while 9.6 percent of registered nurses are male.

Because murses are so dramatically in the minority, some of them have had to deal with lingering public stereotypes that they are gay or effeminate, which both devalues gay nurses and contradicts an American Journal of Men’s Health study finding that male nurses “hold a high degree of masculinity.”

“You know what’s not fun in your early twenties? Being well-dressed, walking up to a girl at a bar, sparking a conversation, and then telling her you’re a nurse,” said a Virginia murse who has contended with these stereotypes. “I had to work backward to prove my heterosexuality. Now that I’m older, in a long-term relationship with a woman, and generally more confident, I don’t really care what people think. But those first few post-graduation years were rough.”

An Oregon critical care nurse said that his favorite jibe about his job is “So, you’re a male nurse, huh?” He likes to reply, “Yep, I tried to be a female nurse, but couldn’t afford the operation.” (He added, “I am not effeminate. I am a dude.”)

Comments about being gay, feminine, or “not man enough” helped push one nurse to join the U.S. Army, which deployed him to Afghanistan with an active combat unit, at his request. The guys in his unit good-naturedly referred to his medical supply bag as “the murse’s murse,” for the male nurse’s man-purse. “I got to apply and test my skill-set and medical knowledge, at times in the most adverse of conditions, producing some of the most powerful memories I will ever experience,” he said. “On a few occasions, I was the first person on the scene for people who were critically wounded in battle. The opportunity to create my own valuable experiences is something that nursing offers that most other career fields don’t. Nursing puts you in the driver’s seat.”

Most murses said that these stereotypes don’t bother them, and that their sexuality, gay or straight, is nobody’s business but theirs. What bothers them is when (typically older) patients assume that because they are men, they must be aspiring doctors. A Canadian ICU murse said that while he had originally planned to be a surgeon, he changed his mind during the month he spent at his father’s hospital bedside before he passed away. “I realized, after seeing the effect that the nurses had on me and my family, that I could have a much bigger impact on patients by being at the bedside all the time, instead of simply writing out orders and operating on someone, but never really being there for them,” the murse said. “I get offended when patients don’t understand why I wouldn’t want to be a doctor, or they keep asking about my ‘real aspirations’ in life. When that happens, I have to explain that my goal is to be a nurse, I love what I do, and I get to do more as a nurse.”

A Maryland medical floor murse had been on the job only a few months when, even after he had clearly introduced himself as a nurse, the patient and patient’s family continued to refer to him as “doctor” and the female physician as “the nurse.” A Delaware murse explained why this is insulting not only to the doctor but also to the nurse. “It insults my profession when people think that if I say something smart, I must be a physician,” the nurse said. “When I worked in the ER, patients would say, ‘You’re so good! Don’t you wish you were a doctor?’ No. I’m a nurse. It’s like telling a chef he’s so good, why doesn’t he become an IT programmer. It is absolutely infuriating. And female nurses never have to deal with it.” Dean Visk, who is finishing his master of science in nursing degree and plans to get a PhD, said that even when he becomes a Doctor of Nursing Practice, “I’ll still identify myself as a nurse. I’m very, very proud to be a nurse.”

On a personal level, murses’ experiences as the minority gender can vary, depending on the unit: While many, like Visk, feel welcomed, others deal with occasional teasing from coworkers. Professional challenges can include “always having to take the infected patient because you’re the only one who can’t get pregnant,” a New York NP said. The Oregon nurse echoed a common murse observation that they are disproportionately assigned to the most difficult patients and often get called in to do the heavy lifting.