Male Nursing Students Training at Clinical Maternity Nursing Course: Challenges and Proposed Improvement Actions

Abstract

Background: Increasing numbers of men enter the nursing field. When males enternursing programs, during their training, they can face challenges, especially in maternityareas. Aim: To determine the challenges facing male nursing students during their trainingin the maternity department and propose improvement plan of actions to overcome thesechallenges. Design: A descriptive exploratory research design was utilized, Sample: Aconvenient sample of (300 participants) composed of (100) male nursing students and(100) female students who just completed their training in the maternity course in theFaculty of Nursing, Fayoum University during the two semesters of the academic year2017-2018. Also 100 of women were recruited in this study. Setting: This study wasimplemented in the maternity department in the Faculty of Nursing, Fayoum University atObstetrics and Gynecological department in El- Nabawy El-Mohandes Fayoum GeneralHospital affiliated to Ministry of Health, Egypt. Tool of data collection: Four tools usedto collect current data: (I) structured self-administered questionnaire, (II) male students'attitudes towards maternity nursing clinical training (III) female nursing students’ attitudetowards their male colleague companionship during clinical training in the maternitydepartment, and lastly (V) Women’s attitude towards involvement of male student inproviding maternity care during training in the maternity department. Results: themajority of studied male students (84%) facing a variety of problems and embarrassingsituations during their training in clinical maternity course, there were moderate statisticalsignificant relation between total attitude of studied male, female students, participantwomen and their residence P-value 0.010, 0.019. and 0.012 Conclusion: A strongpositive correlation reported between male student attitude and their total self-evaluation,women’s and female students’ attitude was statistically significance P-value ≤ 0.05.Recommendations: Further research should be conducted to compare the experiences ofmale nurses in different maternity training settings, residence and culture.