Men topple nursing walls in Nevada and nationwide

By Jackie Valley

Sunday, July 5, 2015 | 2 a.m.

When Scott Lamprecht started his career, he was the only male nurse among 80 staffers in his unit at an Illinois hospital.

He wasn’t surprised. It was the late 1980s, and the gender ratio in his nursing classes always favored women.

But the former paramedic didn’t mind. Lamprecht, then 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, was happy to help lift patients and enjoyed providing health care.

Every so often, however, a patient would voice unease about having a male nurse. An elderly woman once felt so uncomfortable, she requested a change. It wasn’t possible, so Lamprecht continued caring for the woman — and did his best to win her over. The next night, the woman requested that Lamprecht be her nurse.

“I can’t tell you how many times that has happened,” said Lamprecht, now a nurse practitioner in Henderson and president of the Nevada Nursing Association.

These days, Lamprecht’s gender isn’t an anomaly in his field, as the number of men entering the nursing profession gradually has increased over the past four decades. In 1970, about 2.7 percent of registered nurses were men, compared with 9.6 percent in 2011, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Nursing programs in Southern Nevada have seen a growing number of men, as well. Last year, 35 men enrolled in UNLV’s College of Nursing, more than double the number of male nursing students in 2009. Female enrollment, on the other hand, while still the majority, dipped from 130 in 2009 to 109 last year.

“I think we’re going to see more and more men going into nursing,” said Maureen Matteson Kane, professor emeritus at the UNLV College of Nursing. “The image has changed. There are more role models.”

Lamprecht suspects the economic downturn contributed to the spike, as men lost their jobs, became frustrated in dead-end positions and wanted a more stable and lucrative career.

Nevada is one of the highest-paying states for nurses, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nurses nationally earned an average $69,790 in 2014, compared with $80,240 in Nevada.

But money can’t be the only motivation.

“It’s got to be a real draw,” Lamprecht said. “If you are a person coming into nursing for a paycheck, you are not going to last. It takes a real commitment to stick with this.”

When Rhone D’Errico went back to school for nursing, the allure of a professional career enticed him. The Las Vegas native had graduated from UNLV with a bachelor’s degree in psychology but found himself stuck waiting tables without any clear job prospects. So he re-enrolled at UNLV, this time with his eye on a nursing degree, and graduated in 2007.

“It’s an opportunity to help people,” D’Errico said. “Becoming a nurse was basically the best career decision I ever made.”

Matteson Kane, who taught at UNLV from 1977 through 2004, said most of her male nursing students were embarking on second careers, often after working as firefighters or paramedics or serving in the military.

At Roseman University, men typically account for 19 percent to 34 percent of the students enrolled in the accelerated nursing program for people who already completed a bachelor’s degree in another field. Last year, 29 percent of enrollees were men.

Once they earn their nursing degrees, male nurses often gravitate toward jobs in high-intensity environments, such as in emergency rooms, operating rooms or intensive care units, Lamprecht said. It’s also common for men to seek management positions or advanced degrees to become nurse practitioners.

“It’s an upward mobility kind of thing for men,” Kane said. “They want to make more money and go to the next level.”

D’Errico, now a nurse practitioner, was one of the male nurses who moved up the ranks, but he looks back fondly at his time as a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. He was one of the only men working in the unit, taking care of sick and premature newborns.

“Nursing is a fulfilling career for just about anybody,” D’Errico said. “I encourage men and women to get into it.”