Traditional views and prejudice are discouraging men from entering the nursing profession. Zhu Lixin reports from Hefei.

Suo Xiaolong, a sophomore majoring in nursing at Hefei Vocational and Technical College, is busy preparing for a provincial nursing skills contest later this month.

The college, based in the capital of Anhui province in East China, first allowed male students to enroll in 2002, but this is the first time a male student has been chosen to represent it at the competition.

Fewer than 100 of the 3,000 students on Suo's three-year course are male, but even so, he is an exception among his peers because he had set his heart on a career in nursing before entering college.

"Most of the other boys didn't choose the major; they were adjusted to it," said Sun Meilan, vice-president of the college's school of medicine.

According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, by the end of 2002, there were 1.25 million nurses in China, but just 1.7 percent of them were men. By the end of 2014, the numbers had climbed to 3 million and 1.9 percent, respectively.

During a seminar last year, Cheng Gen, director of the Male Nurse Committee, founded in 2014 by the Chinese Nursing Association, estimated that the percentage of male nurses in 2015 would be no different from the previous year.

Suo is confident about his future career prospects because his tutors have emphasized that the employment rate for male nursing graduates is high. However, no matter how high his level of skill, the 23-year-old will still have to contend with traditional notions that nursing is not a suitable profession for men.

Embarrassment

In 2002, Li Shen was one of the first four male nursing students to enroll at the college in Hefei. Three years later, he became the first male nurse to be employed by the Hefei First Hospital Group.

"Patients who have been here for some days know I'm a nurse, but it's still embarrassing that new patients often think I'm a doctor. Sometimes, they just don't understand how a man can work as a nurse," he said.

In 2004, during their last year at college, Li and his three male classmates were sent to a local hospital as interns. The experience was frustrating because some of the patients refused to allow them to administer injections and demanded female nurses do the job instead.

Yang Bin has experienced similar embarrassment. He worked as a nurse in a hospital in Shanghai from 2007 until 2011, when he moved to work at the Hefei Binhu Hospital, a branch of the Hefei First Hospital Group, in the city's Baohe district.

"After graduating from a vocational college in Anhui, I went to Shanghai, because I thought people in a developed city would be more open to male nurses. That wasn't always the case," said Yang, who hails from a rural county close to Hefei.

He is now one of two head nurses in the hospital's elderly care department, and the only man among 80 nurses.

Last year, a survey conducted by the Chinese Nursing Association showed that 52.45 percent of the 5,939 male nurses who responded didn't think nursing was a reputable job, while 27 percent said they found it unrewarding.

Ignoring prejudice

Li and Yang are accustomed to working in the face of bigotry and ignorance. "We're can't eliminate the prejudice, so we just ignore it," Yang said.

However, Sun, from the medical school, said many men are reluctant to tell people they are studying nursing, and many leave the profession after just a few years.

After graduation, two of Li's male classmates chose to move into medical sales, a popular choice among male nursing graduates, according to insiders.

Sun believes the move into sales was partly prompted by the prejudice shown by patients and their families. "Also, salespeople earn much more than nurses", she said.

The Hefei First Hospital Group, which has four branches across the city, employs 1,704 nurses, but only 15 of them are male. Reading the list of names, Yang said 13 are married, including him, and at least 11 of the couples were college classmates.

The number of classmates who have paired off indicates the problems faced by male nurses.

"Finding a girlfriend is easy, but winning the approval of her parents can be quite tough," said Yang, whose opinion was echoed by male colleagues, such as Li, who believes male nursing students can benefit from studying a female-dominant major "because they can easily find a girlfriend".

He added that if a male nurse doesn't find a girlfriend at school, he might find it difficult to find one after graduation: "Girls often think nursing isn't a job for men. Their parents' prejudices are no different from those of other people."

Wu Xufeng, assistant to the head nurse in the Hefei Hospital's intensive care unit has faced that problem. "We have all taken great pains and spent years trying to finally win recognition from girls' parents," he said.

His wife Peng Zhangxia, who is also a nurse at the hospital, believes that prejudice against male nurses is really discrimination against all nurses.

"Many people consider nursing simply as serving patients. Well, sometimes they do treat us like servants, because they regard nursing as a low-status job, and they take it for granted that men should have better career options than women," she said.

Pan Aihong, director of the hospital's nursing department, said public perceptions of male nurses are outdated and flawed: "Nursing is far more complex than giving jabs and dispensing medicine. Male nurses have their own strengths; for example, undertaking labor-intensive work, handling emergencies and operating sophisticated machinery."

She believes male nurses are more suitable than females in a number of areas, including intensive care, elderly care, emergency rooms and male genitourinary departments.

The peak time for male nurses at the Hefei First Hospital Group was 2015, when 19 men were employed. In the two years that followed, though, four quit. "Three moved to medical-equipment sales," Yang said.

Sun, from the medical college, was sanguine: "Roughly 50 percent of male nursing students will find employment post-graduation, but a few will still quit the profession sometime in the future."

For Cheng Chi, a male nurse in the rehabilitation center at the Hefei Hospital, commitment is the most important attribute male nurses can have. "Money is not everything. For those of us who decide to stick with the job, the hardest thing we have to face is prejudice," he said..

As the national family planning policy now permits most couples to have two children, it's expected that a rising number of female nurses will take maternity leave, a situation that would make male nurses even more popular, according to Pan. "Even though the hospitals need more male nurses, we just don't have enough applicants," she said.

Special provisions

According to Sun, the lack of applicants can also be attributed to the fact that female students usually perform better in exams than males.

"Most hospitals in China are State-owned. In most cases, applicants have to pass certain exams to get into them", she said, adding that special provisions have been put in place to encourage more men to join the profession.

"As a result, a local hospital had to reserve 10 "male-only" nursing positions in 2015," said Sun, who is proud that three graduates of her college gained employment by passing exams, and not through a quota system.

Pan is hoping for a surge in applicants, but said her hospital can do nothing but wait. She doesn't believe that preferential treatment will remedy the shortfall.

"To insist that a certain number of positions are reserved for men could easily prompt concerns about gender discrimination, but we should at least treat male nurses well to make sure they are willing to stay in the profession," she said.

Sun said there are no official public policies to encourage more men to study nursing, but attitudes will change and men will flourish in the profession.

"Just wait until all the deeply-rooted prejudice is eliminated," she said.

Contact the writer at zhulixin@chinadaily.com.cn

Wu Xufeng (right) treats a patient in the intensive care unit at the Hefei Binhu Hospital, Anhui province.Gao Bo / For China Daily