Swimming against the malestream: we need more men to become nurses

Today is International Nurses Day2019 - #IND19 – and being a nurse, I of course wanted to add my thoughts on the contribution and impact that Nurses make, not just here in the UK, but across the world. And it’s a formidable impact. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that there are approximately 29 million Nurses and Midwives in the world. Globally, Nurses remain a critical part of health care and still make up the largest group of all health professionals. Across the world, 70% of the health and social care workforce are women compared to some 41% in all other employment sectors. As such nurses and midwives represent a significant share of the overall female workforce.

Nurses were said to be key to developing the United Nations’ ‘Millennium Development Goals’ and remain key to achieving the UN’s current ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. These are 17 goals and 169 targets that form a ‘to-do list’ aimed at wiping out poverty, reducing inequality, and tackling climate change by the year 2030. The WHO argues that in order for all countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (on health and wellbeing), the world will need an additional 9 million nurses and midwives by 2030. That’s a difficult challenge to meet. However, investing in nurses and midwives is absolutely good value for money! The UN High Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, which published its five-year action plan in 2016, noted that investments in education and job creation in health and social care, result in a triple return of improved health outcomes, global health security and inclusive economic growth – a win-win outcome and one that reflects this year’s #IND19 theme – Health for All. The 2019 theme is the last in what was a three-year campaign by the International Council of Nurses - Nurses:  A Voice to Lead. It is a campaign aimed at recognising the need for nurses to become more aware and active about health policy development and implementation. 

Closer to home, here in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) employs some 1.5 million people. There are 82 countries in the world with smaller populations than this number. It is the UK’s biggest employer and one of the largest employers globally.  A UK think tank, the Nuffield Trust, published a report on the NHS workforce last week which notes that across all NHS care settings, there are around 150,000 doctors and over 320,000 nurses and midwives. I found it interesting to read that even when these two groups are combined, they constitute only a third of the total NHS workforce. It’s a reflection perhaps of the multidisciplinary nature of the NHS, and the high degree of interdependency there is across so many different professions in delivering good health care services. 

Within the UK nursing profession, just some 11% of all registered nurses are male. This is congruent with many global health services. Iran is the exception, with nearly a quarter (23%) of its nurses being male. According to a report published by NHS England in February this year, the good news story is that, in the UK, a record-breaking number of male school leavers have applied for nursing programmes this year. This follows the very successful ‘We Are The NHS’ recruitment campaign launched as part of the NHS 70 celebrations last year. There has been a 9% rise in the number of men applying to become nurses since last year. Some 2,650 men have applied. This week’s blog title is an adaptation of the title of a paper I read almost 10 years ago, a paper written by Thomas Harding on why men choose nursing as a career. Interestingly, he found two of the reason’s men might choose to become a nurse were a focus on human caring and the transformational potential nursing provided for personal fulfilment.  

And for hard pressed health service organisations, there is more other good news. The overall number of people applying for nursing programmes rose by nearly 5% on the numbers for 2018, reversing the downward trend seen since 2016. Nearly 31,000 people applied for nursing degrees this year, which whilst not solving the immediate workforce shortages does indicate we might be moving in the right direction in securing a future workforce. What will help in the immediate future is the increase in the number of nurses from outside the EU who are registering to work in the UK. The numbers have doubled in the last year, with 6,157 nurses and midwives registering last year - a rise of 2,790 from the year previously. We have a long way to go, and as the corrosiveness of Brexit continues, we might have to go a long way in finding the necessary numbers of overseas nurses to fill the workforce gaps. 

On International Nurses Day 2019, I wonder what Florence Nightingale might have said about the state of the nursing profession today. And I wanted to end this week’s blog in acknowledging the contribution to health care of another remarkable woman. Her name is Kate Fussell, and she recently celebrated her 90th birthday. She isn’t a nurse but was a surgeon. In 1970, she became the first female surgeon to operate at the Wigan Hospitals (now Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh, an NHS Trust I work with as a Non Executive Director). Indeed, at that time she was one of just six female surgeons in the UK. Over her career, she made a huge contribution to the NHS and health care. She was also a driving force for the Soroptimist International organisation. This is an organisation that I am ashamed to say I have never heard of before. Its aim is to transform the lives of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities.  I think that’s an aim we can all work towards achieving, as might be the ambition to get more men to become a nurse.