For a long time, the idea of a nurse has been of a woman. Fortunately, this has been slowly changing, as men have started going into the industry and finding gainful employment.
The number of male nurses continues to increase nationwide and the major demand for travel nurses keeps growing at a record pace. One question that has no definitive answer is whether some of these men are going into travel nursing.
Here at Ventura MedStaff, we welcome all kinds of travelers, as long as you are qualified, we can find the right place for you. Reach out to our recruiters if you have any questions or if you want to jump right in.
What Are the Overall Numbers?
The percentage of male nurses in the United States increased from less than 2% in 1977 to nearly 9.6% in 2018, according to a survey conducted over four decades. That figure stayed constant throughout the most recent comprehensive study on the subject, which was completed in 2020. So, even though this is still an overwhelmingly female-dominated industry, things are trending towards equality.
Why Male Nurses Would Choose Travel Nursing?
For a lot of nurses who apply for the travel nurse jobs, the primary motivation is to explore different places while at the same time working in their field with excellent wages. In the past few years, this situation has changed somewhat. This has proven to be true, regardless of gender.
The global pandemic really put a strain on everyone and medicinal staff in particular. As nurses are the workforce of the medical profession, a lot of the pressure has impacted them disproportionately. This has led to an increase in burnout cases, where people just can’t take the stress of the job and leave – in an industry that was already plagued by this problem.
Thanks to these factors, the demand for travel nurses has increased dramatically, which caused the wages and conditions that these traveling medical professionals get to go significantly up. In fact, by some measures, the travel nurse wages went up as much as 35%, and that might not be the end of it.
Are Male Nurses Choosing the Traveler’s Career?
It can be difficult to give a clear answer to this question. Seeing how staffing is handled by a number of staffing agencies like Ventura MedStaff, the information about the applicants is kept secret for privacy reasons. Still, there are some statistical analyses that can be done on the information provided without ever knowing the exact personal information of the applicants.
Even so, the information available to the public is not complete nor necessarily fully accurate. Case in point, some information from the past several years tells us that over 50% of all travelers are women, with the percentage of men ranging from 10 to 15%. As you can see, there is a large swathe of applicants who did not specify their gender, making the dataset somewhat incomplete and less useful.
Still, what we can gather from this dataset is that the percentage of travelers roughly corresponds with the overall percentage of male nurses. The tentative conclusion might be that men opt for this kind of a career as much as women, but the incompleteness of the information makes this conclusion highly dubious.
Ventura MedStaff has had the pleasure of finding work for some really amazing nurses, both male and female. Ultimately, the gender of the nurse isn’t what counts, but rather their dedication and expertise in their field. If you think you have what it takes to become a travel nurse, reach out to us, and we will find the best posting for you.
