[jgrubb]

Does anyone have any pointers for a male RN student? When you were in school did you feel like the tests were gender biased? Any advice is much appreciated!

[Rita_RN_BSN]

my best friend in college was a guy, & he really didn't have any complaints about being a male in a primarily female dominated major. Regarding the tests, there were no "gender biases", but sometimes in clinical, the only thing was that most people thought he was a med student or doctor (again with the stereotyping!!!). But, if your heart is in it, like his was, it doesn't matter what anyone says or thinks.

[airm8t23]

I'm a male and I am graduating from nursing school in December. In my class we have 5 guys and 20 girls. I have had no problems at all and have found the instructors, patients, and students to be very open minded and non-biased. Many nurses and fellow students have stated they "feel its wonderful that men are deciding to follow a career in nursing". Good luck to you and I know you will love it!

[Duncan]

I never felt as if my education was gender biased. If anything the only problems I have ever encountered as a man were in personal care of women patients. I live and used to work in an ethnic hospital. Many Asian and Latin women did not want a white man touching them. Unfortunately, they often kept this to themselves until it was time for them to go to the bathroom... then they looked at me with shock and horror.
Oh well!

[jr4jc]

my instructors 20 yrs ago made it harder on males and it was a black school so they also made it harder on whites male and female--these were people with issues.

as a nurse i have had very few bad reactions to being a male nurse, one was from a man whose son was in nursing school and e didn't like it. so e took it out on me?@??!?

[jr4jc]

as far as advice if you don't ave a merck manual get one, very concise teaches about disease and treatments in a few pages, cliff notes like

[bayleaf36ff]

Look into getting Epocrates on a PDA as well... It's an incredible medical resource. The full package has a drug index, a disease database, and a section on lab values. The drug section is great for finding out what a drug is, and the normal dosage, however it's not very useful as far as side effects and administration... It's made for docs, not for nurses. If you see in a chart that someone has a certain disease/condition, you can look it up very quickly on Epocrates. Or if a doc orders a lab, and you can only make out the first couple letters, you can search alphabetically and find it. I used mine all the time in school... It's still in my pocket now, and I pull it out once or twice a night to look something up.

As for the gender bias question, I noticed that some questions on tests assumed that I knew things that I did not necessarily know. The average age of a student at my school was about 35. Being a 21 year old male (at the time) meant I was in a completely different stage of life than everyone else. They would ask diet questions, and the foods would be things I had never even heard of. That was the biggest thing I remember. But I can't really say it was gender biased.

Jeremy

[pipingmad]

I only noticed a few questions slip by with a hint of perhaps being biased. It also goes to your own mentality. Do you or would you be looking for such bias all the time? How would you react to it?

The only thing that ever made me feel awkward was my instructors asking any female clients if they were okay with having a male student. I know it is their choice, but it sends a mixed message in my opinion. Let the patient see me first and then make their decision to accept me or not as a nursing student.

[MagRedC5]

Originally Posted by jgrubb

Does anyone have any pointers for a male RN student? When you were in school did you feel like the tests were gender biased? Any advice is much appreciated!

Here is my thoughts; Obviously, men & women think differently. Most nursing instructors are female. At least, in my nursing program[s] we only had one male instructor. Therefore, maybe the test are written/interpreted in an untentional gender bias way favoring females. My ADN program had 98% NCLEX success rate. So, I knew the nursing faculty knew what they were doing. I tried not to read into the questions, and did my test preparation based off our leacture notes, as well as cited resources.

In my RN-BSN program we had only one male instructor. However, the course work was a little different and did not notice any gender-bias either way. Remember, you are entering a field where your gender will be around 6% of the work force. Unless, you'd like some info on the Army Nurse Corps where around 34% of nurses are males.

Good luck!