On June 19th, 2022 we celebrate the national holiday known as Father’s Day. Keep reading to learn more about this holiday and how we are recognizing the dads in healthcare this year.
What’s the History Behind Father’s Day?
This day has a rich history as the first Father’s Day our nation ever celebrated was on June 19th of 1910. Although this is true, this day was not established as a proper nationwide holiday in the United States until 1972. This holiday is celebrated annually every year on the third Sunday of June by over 100 countries. While this holiday is honored by a plethora of different types of people and walks of life, an important piece to recognize is the celebration of Father’s Day in healthcare.
While everyone may celebrate Father’s Day in a different way from some others, the meaning, and importance of this day remain the same throughout everything. This day is dedicated to a specific category of heroes in our everyday society, fathers of course, along with father figures who play a critical part in shaping us into who we are now.
Fathers Who Work in the Healthcare Field
The term hero is incredibly amplified when a father is part of the healthcare sector, this person is no longer just a hero to their family and the people around them, but also a hero to all those that they give care to while on the job.
To the everyday citizen who isn’t well educated on healthcare, when the nursing profession is mentioned to them, a female worker may come into mind. However, there are in fact, more men working in healthcare today than at any previous time in history, which is a fantastic development for male nurses and healthcare workers all around. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in 2021, 12% of our registered nurses (RNs) are men, which is a huge rise from previous years. Overall, the demographic between male and female nurses has a great difference with female nurses at well over 50% overall. While the difference is still large, there is always time to change this especially since healthcare jobs can actually be fantastic for any man looking to work in the field.
Although 12% can seem like a small number, that is still quite a lot of men that are working in healthcare today, which will most likely only continue to rise. Additionally, just as it is with women that choose to work in healthcare, there are a plethora of paths to take such as being an RN, licensed practical nurse (LPN), certified nursing assistant (CNA), orderly, secretary, respiratory therapist, dentist, dietary worker, and much more. However, due to the small number of men compared to women, the job can be especially difficult for fathers working in healthcare. This is exactly why although Father’s Day may already be over, fathers in healthcare should be appreciated each and every day.
Although the small percentage of male workers alone presents some disheartenment, this also raises a number of different challenges for those already working in the healthcare field. Fathers working in healthcare must make frequent sacrifices such as losing much-needed time with their families to focus on caring for patients. Being away from your children and other family members for extended periods of time can be very difficult for any person, as well as the children of these healthcare workers, who lose quality time with their fathers.
Challenges for Fathers and Male Nurses in Healthcare
While the challenge of being away from family is already very large and sometimes quite difficult to deal with, apart from this, there are a number of challenges for fathers and males in healthcare that have nothing to do with family and everything to do with the nature of working in healthcare itself. A challenge that many may not know about is the difficulty of finding comfortable scrubs for male nurses to wear. This is due to the fact that although male-specific scrubs do exist, 90% of the products marketed are unisex which can be quite difficult as everyone has a varying body type and something comfortable to someone may be uncomfortable to someone else.
Furthermore, a common misconception among outsiders and patients is that male workers can be considered harsher in their approach to medical care. However this is definitely not the case at all, those working in the healthcare profession have a desire to help and care for others, along with this, the fathers in healthcare sacrifice a lot from their personal lives to be able to do just that. Unfortunately, these are only two out of the many other challenges that male healthcare workers can face while on the job. Here at NursaTM, we send our strongest thanks to the fathers working in healthcare every day, and we encourage those reading to do the same.
