College of Nursing Hosts Men in Nursing Conference

Nearly 200 people attended the Third Annual Men in Nursing MANUP3 Conference on May 3, 2017 at Procter Hall, home to the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Nursing. The conference was co-presented by the Greater Cincinnati American Association for Men in Nursing (AAMN), the UC College of Nursing, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Ohio Action Coalition.

This was the first time in the three year history of the MANUP conference that it’s been held at UC. According to Guy Beck, president of the AAMN Cincinnati Chapter, and an education specialist at Cincinnati Children’s for the critical care float pool, each year the MANUP acronym has been different. This year it stood for Motivate, Advocate, Navigate, Unify and Protect. 

"It’s always MANUP, it’s sort of tongue-in-cheek,” says Beck. "To be a male nurse, you’re saying to ‘man up’ as in ‘it’s okay to care for others and still be manly.’”

Beck says from first-hand experience, being the minority gender in any particular field is challenging.

"Caring is the most manly thing you can do, but societal gender norms don’t necessarily jive with that. Our conference is to mitigate that preconceived notion of what a man should do,” says Beck. "In any field, there’s a culture of men and what they do. Females who have entered male-dominated fields have seen this. It’s the same thing for nursing. It’s a feminine culture and navigating that sometimes can be difficult from a male perspective.” 

The conference featured a full day of speakers on topics coinciding with the MANUP theme this year, including Greer Glazer, PhD, dean of the UC College of Nursing, whose presentation was titled "UNITE: Holistic Admissions as a Strategy to Promote Diversity of the Student Body/Nursing Workforce.”

"Diversity is just not enough,” says Glazer. "You can’t try to have an organization full of people with lots of differences if you don’t focus on inclusion. You have to focus on creating an environment where everybody, because of their differences, can thrive.”

According to Glazer, the percentage of male nursing students enrolled in the College of Nursing in the fall of 2016 was 14 percent, compared to 11 percent in the fall of 2011. Male enrollment in the freshman class for 2017 is 22 percent and Glazer says one of the reasons for those increases is due to the College being deliberate in attracting more male students.

"You have to be intentional about what you’re trying to do,” she says. "We deliberately hired more men and we have men teaching in our undergraduate curriculum because I want our students to see role models. They have to see role models.”