When Roneel Prasad was about 8 years old, he saw his mother almost die.
She had lupus, a disease that affects the immune system, and the doctor had failed to notice that her spleen was about to burst.
“She was like a day away from death. (The nurse) didn’t know exactly what was going on, so she called the physician, and the physician yelled at her. But she was fine with it ““ she would rather have the physician yell at her than have a patient die on her,” Prasad said, adding that the doctor reacted poorly because a nurse saw what he had missed.
Today, Prasad is a student in the Master’s Entry Clinical Nurse program at the UCLA School of Nursing. The care that nurses gave his mother helped spark his interest in the profession, he said, adding that his mother has survived everything from pneumonia to a coma since her infected spleen.
Prasad is a minority in the field ““ about 9 percent of nursing students at UCLA are male, said Dr. Courtney Lyder, dean of the UCLA School of Nursing. Nationwide, 6 to 8 percent of nurses are male.
“One (classmate) told me he thought of quitting the nursing school because he felt left out, disengaged, isolated, so it got me thinking: How many other men must feel this way?” Prasad said.
Prasad began organizing quarterly dinners for men in the nursing school, where they could share their experiences and network with each other. In 2009, this support group became the UCLA chapter of Men in Nursing, part of the American Assembly for Men in Nursing.
The group, which has about 20 members, meets for dinner twice a quarter in Westwood, said Sean Scott, a third-year nursing student who helped start the club.
Second-year nursing student Jonathan Lee said meeting other male nursing students through the group helped him to see that he had chosen the right career. He said it can be tough to deal with people’s inaccurate perceptions of male nurses.
“A lot of people think guys shouldn’t be (nurses). A lot feel like they’re (medical) school drop outs, or somehow effeminate,” Lee said.
One reason for these stereotypes is the historically common view that nursing is a female-dominated profession, Lyder said.
Television shows and movies like “Meet the Fockers” contribute to these negative portrayals by depicting male nurses as unimportant or comical, said Philip Julian, a board member of the Assembly and nursing professor at East Carolina University.
Prasad has met patients who harbor these views while working at hospitals ““ one patient called him gay using derogatory language.
Prasad also treated a professor from the California Institute of Technology who told him he was not smart enough to attend Caltech.
But after Prasad massaged the professor’s head to relieve the pain and put on his favorite type of music, he changed his mind and thanked Prasad for the treatment.
“I could have been a doctor, but I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be as close to patients as I am now,” Prasad said. “If (doctors) specialize in kidneys, they only focus on kidneys, or they only focus on the heart, whereas the nurse sees the patient from head to toe.”
Scott also cited interaction with patients as a major factor that led him to choose nursing over becoming a doctor.
“There was one patient who just couldn’t move on her own ““ she needed assistance with everything,” Scott said, adding that he bathed and fed her. “She couldn’t really talk or anything, but the way she looked at me, I could tell she really appreciated how I took care of her. It was just like, “˜Thank you for doing this.'”
Lyder, who became the first male dean at the UCLA School of Nursing in 2008, belonged to the first chapter of the male nursing support group as a student at Rush University’s nursing college.
“The group was a wonderful outlet to really talk about issues that were pertinent to men, like the push-back for male students in obstetrics,” Lyder said.
Years after that first chapter, male nursing students are still underrepresented. But the number of male students at the UCLA nursing school continues to increase, said Rhonda Flenoy-Younger, director of recruitment, outreach and admissions at the school.
“It is a goal of mine to increase the amount of men in the School of Nursing,” Lyder said. “It’s just a different voice and a different perspective, and that only enriches the program.”
More students are also joining the American Assembly for Men in Nursing, said Byron McCain, the organization’s executive director. There is even a student chapter of the Assembly in Beirut, Lebanon, he said.
The job security that accompanies nursing may be one reason for the growth of males in the profession, Julian said. He added that many men in the nursing profession choose it as a second career.
That was the path Prasad took. He worked at a hospital during his senior year of high school and thought about going into nursing, but ended up getting a bachelor’s degree in business in 2003 and working at a bank.
“I started questioning whether the business field was good for me, if it would bring me satisfaction, does it make me happy,” said Prasad, who entered UCLA in 2007. “The answer was no. I just wanted to become a nurse.”