'Man up and go into nursing,' says shadow health secretary
Males contemplating a career choice should “man up and go into nursing”, a Scottish Conservative MSP has said.
Shadow health secretary Miles Briggs said it was time for young men to stop avoiding professions which were historically seen as only appealing to females, such as nursing.
And by encouraging more men into the job, it would help avert future staffing crises like the one the NHS is currently experiencing, he said.
Writing in today’s Scotland on Sunday, the Lothians MSP added that more had to be done to address decreasing numbers of male applicants to nursing.
Latest ISD Scotland figures showed nursing vacancy levels are the highest on record, while the NHS also spends tens of millions of pounds each hire plugging gaps with agency and bank staff.
Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Miles Briggs said:
“We know that there are decreasing numbers of men applying to become nurses, despite work to improve that.
“So as a society we must all think about what sort of men we want young Scottish males to grow up to become.
“It’s time for males to man up and go into nursing.
“Not only will that be a valuable progression socially, it would also go some way to plugging gaps in the nursing workforce in future.
“We cannot afford to see the vacancy levels currently experienced in the NHS repeated.
“These have come about through disastrous workforce planning by the SNP, which hasn’t taken into account an ageing population, nor indeed an ageing nursing workforce, a huge slice of whom are contemplating retirement.
“Tackling this particular brand of gender stereotyping would go some way to addressing these problems.”