Brian Jablonksi feels like Barney when he walks through the hospital in his purple scrubs. But in NYU's nursing program, seeing a dinosaur in a hospital corridor wouldn't be much more rare than seeing a male nursing student.
"There are about five males in my class and about 115 females," said Jablonski, a senior nursing major in the College of Dentistry.
Jablonski, who said all NYU nursing students wear purple scrubs to distinguish them as students, frequently gets awkward reactions when he tells other people he is a nursing student.
"Usually walking around campus in my scrubs, people ask whether I'm a pre-med student, and I tell them I'm a nursing student and they say, 'I didn't know there were guys in nursing,' " he said. "Sometimes when I walk into a room, a patient will say, 'OK, I have this, and this, and this,' and I have to say, 'Sorry ma'am, I'm not a doctor.' I don't think there is so much of a stereotype for men in nursing, but for nursing in general."
With a cultural preconception that nursing is for females, male nurses are often a small minority. Out of 1,174 students in NYU's nursing program, only 78 are male, making it roughly a 15-to-1 male-to-female ratio.
When Jablonski told some family members that he was going into nursing, they asked why he wasn't just going to be a doctor.
"They almost felt nursing was like a step down from being a doctor," he said. "I knew I wanted to do something in the medical field, but during high school, I realized that doctors didn't get to do much direct patient care, and I felt nurses made more of a difference.I wanted [to do] more than just give them a medicine to make them better. When people come to the hospital, they aren't just sick physically but they need to get over the illness mentally too, and that's what nurses do."
Kevin Tse, who is also a senior in the program, had similar reasons for going into nursing.
"When you first walk into an emergency room, the first person you see is a triage nurse - everything starts from there," Tse said. "You appreciate patient care more being a nurse. As a doctor, you don't have time to really interact so much with the patient, but as a nurse, you're there one-on-one and know them on a personal level."
Tse said he also went into nursing because there are far fewer nursing students than pre-medical students, so he can get more on-the-job experience and really figure out whether the medical field is for him.
"A lot of people I know in pre-med don't really have it in them to really want to help people - they just want to do it for the money," Tse said. "With nursing, I'm getting the experience and, having been in the program for three years, I already consider myself a nurse."
It might sound like a dream scenario for a guy to be in classes where he is overwhelmingly outnumbered by females, but this overflow of estrogen can often be a struggle.
"My sophomore year, I was talking with a whole bunch of girls [in the nursing program] and they were talking about the guys they dated over the weekend," he said. "It's definitely not a frustration or anger, but it is depressing at times because sometimes you just need some guys to talk to about girls, or to watch sports."
Working in a hospital where patients have become so accustomed to female nurses, there are times when being a male nurse can bring awkward moments.
"When we did our labor and delivery in paternal health, those were areas where it was definitely awkward being a male; you're dealing with female privates and the actual act of giving birth," Jablonski said. "There were times when I was asked to leave for either personal or religious reasons, but I don't let it bother me too much."
But Jablonksi has also had times when being a male came as an advantage. He once took care of a male construction worker who had injured his leg and was embarrassed being around female nurses. Jablonski helped him through rehab and helped him recover not only physically, but mentally.
"I was consoling him because he was pretty emotionally upset about his injury," he said. "Sometimes the best thing to do with patients is to listen because they have so much stress built up that they just want to get it off their chest. This guy was pretty angry because he couldn't walk for a while. But I just had to tell him, 'Even though it's hard for you, you'll be healed and get back to where you were before.' "
Despite having to wear the purple scrubs and being asked to leave a room because of their gender, Jablonski and Tse both said being a nursing major is incredibly rewarding.
"I have a patient's life in my hands; seeing them go from such dark times to walking away three days later - those are memorable moments," Tse said. "Just knowing that you can change a life - give someone a second opportunity at life - I would say it's one of the best feelings in the world."
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