The hallways of the nursing college within the West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park are lined with black-and-white class photos. There are hundreds of portraits of nursing-school graduates, all with seemingly identical painted lips and sporting long hair, cute white hats and neatly starched white blouses.
But in the conference room at the end of that hallway, some potential nurses look a bit different–mustaches, receding hairlines, a few beer bellies and some wrinkled T-shirts.
It’s a crisp autumn Saturday and about 30 guys are investigating nursing as a career.
“We’re here to educate men on the field,” says Cynthia Valdez, director of enrollment for the medical center who points out that only 6 percent of nurses nationwide use the men’s bathroom.
Many at this recruitment seminar, titled Men in Nursing, are seeking a career change, lured by the stability of the medical industry. Guys like Doug Hamrick, 43, of Berwyn, who looks like he would make a great offensive lineman but who works as a restaurant manager.
Or Paul Hernandez, 45, of Chicago, a canine police officer who will soon retire into this new career. He currently moonlights as a nursing student and occasionally catches heat from his peers on the force. “You hear some of that,” the married father says of the stigma associated with the title male nurse, “but that’s just born out of ignorance.”
Worse than the occasional ribbing, Hernandez says, is that friends and coworkers now come to him with every ache and pain.
When the seminar ends, the students and prospects leave the conference room, perhaps hoping to catch the end of a college football game.
More Top Picks Best 55 Inch Tvs
As they walk past those class pictures, few seem to notice a display cabinet containing a dozen dolls, most of which resemble the photos on the walls.
But one doll, clearly a new addition, stands out from the others. It’s dressed in white pants and a burgundy sweater vest–clearly a male and clearly in the right place.