More men at ASU are donning scrubs than the national average - but not as doctors.
Men accounted for about 11 percent of the 1,493 undergraduate nursing students in The College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation, according to the ASU Institutional Analysis report.
That puts ASU higher than the national average of 9.7 percent reported by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
"Things have changed," said Cheryl Herrera, director of student services in the College of Nursing.
Herrera said it used to be that men traditionally wanted to be doctors and women wanted to be nurses.
"In our society, for a long time, there were different career paths imposed on boys and girls," Herrera said. "But it takes a generation for that to [change]."
With the breakdown of stereotypes, male students are becoming more aware of the profession, Herrera said.
Herrera added that nursing as a profession differs from other medical fields.
"You have much more personal contact with patients," Herrera said. "That relationship with patient and nurse is ongoing."
Steve Fosse, a nursing senior, said he changed his mind on majoring in computer science after a life-changing experience with nurses.
"I had a brain tumor and had surgery for it," Fosse said.
Fosse underwent surgery to remove the benign tumor - which he was told was the size of a tennis ball - in 2001 and was forced to drop out of school for six months.
"After going through that whole experience, it made me want to give back to all the nurses that I came into contact with," Fosse said. "Kind of made me change what I wanted to do with the rest of my life."
Fosse remembered one nurse in particular, a man named Joe.
"[He] felt like a big brother to me," Fosse said.
Students who don't know any male nurses may not understand why men choose the field, Fosse said.
Fosse was nicknamed "Focker" (after a character in the movie "Meet the Parents") by some of his friends when he first began the nursing program.
The name wore off as friends got used to the idea, he said.
Shortages in the nursing field have created a higher demand for the job, making it more appealing to some students.
"[There's] more job security," said Ernesto Bastida, a pre-nursing junior.
Bastida said while he doesn't see many men in his classes, the women welcome them, despite their minority status.
"They're more understanding than people who aren't in the program," he said.
Bastida said he thinks more men would enter the field with help from administration.
"People are starting to learn more about nursing and at the same time they're doing more publicity," Bastida said. "They're trying to recruit more men"
Men become even more of a minority in nursing once they enter the professional field.
Of registered nurses, 5.7 percent are men, according to the AACN.
Nurses in general are low in numbers. This could be because professional programs are ill equipped to educate all the applicants, said Herrera.
This fall, the nursing professional program admitted 140 students, with 18 of them male, Herrera said.
The program received 360 applicants and 280 were considered qualified, Herrera said. Due to a lack of nursing educators and too few locations for hands-on training, the program had to resort to cutting down the pool of qualified applicants, Herrera said.
Despite turning away qualified students, Herrera said the program hopes to continue recruiting both men and women.
"Once you get a significant cohort of men in a program, it makes it easier for more men to come to that program," Herrera said. "You just reinforce the level of comfort of prospective male nurses by increasing the number you already have there."
Reach the reporter at: matthew.g.stone@asu.edu.
