Stressors experienced by male minority student nurses while completing a baccalaureate program

This phenomenological study, using Edmund Husserl's descriptive phenomenology, explored the stressors experienced by male minority student nurses while completing a baccalaureate program. The purpose of this study was to explore the major stressors experienced by male baccalaureate nursing students from racial and ethnic minority groups. In addition, coping mechanisms or strategies used by the participants to deal with those stressors were also studied. Furthermore, the participants' thoughts and opinions regarding the reasons or contributing factors related to the lack of male minority students in nursing were explored in this study. Through face-to-face, audio-taped interviews using five open-ended questions and probes to facilitate discussion 10 male minority student nurses discussed the stressors they experienced. Each transcript describing the stressor experienced by male minority student nurse was analyzed using Colaizzi phenomenological methodology. Four patterns and seventeen them emerged from analyzing the transcripts. The four patterns include :Higher Perceived expectation Outnumbered Treated Differently and Ridiculed for Being Male. The overarching theme is Being a Male is More Stressful than Being a Minority (Table 1) Understanding these stressors urges each and every of us and our society as a whole to re-evaluate the way we have been viewing and treating male student nurses and male nurses. More importantly, appropriate and urgent actions need to be taken to minimize or eliminate these stressors so that we can potentially have more minority male in the nursing profession.