Background: This study explored the views of male student nurses regarding the profession of nursing, highlighting that opinions are influenced by both their personal experiences and behavioral observations of nurses. Gender, year of education, degree of family support, interactions with senior nurses, and personal experiences in the health care industry are important considerations. Objective: To determine the views of male learner nurses towards the nursing profession at a selected nursing education institution in the Limpopo province, South Africa. Methods: In this study, a qualitative, exploratory descriptive research design was adopted. The population was male learner nurses registered under the Regulation 174 program for the academic year 2024. A non-probability purposive or judgment sampling method was employed to select male learner nurses from the general population. The sample size for this study was determined by data saturation. The data were analyzed using the thematic analysis method. Results: Participants reported experiencing stigma, ridicule, and difficulty identifying with the profession due to dominant feminine discourse. Societal expectations, media portrayals, and a lack of male role models perpetuated harmful stereotypes. Male participants emphasized the importance of inclusive curricula, clinical experiences, and mentorship. Conclusions: Male learner nurses’ thoughts and experiences during clinical exposure illuminate the challenges they experience in a traditionally female dominated field. These challenges include gender-based stereotypes that impact male nurses’ self-perception, job dissatisfaction, and career advancement, as well as stigma or mockery resulting from societal expectations when performing intimate procedures because of cultural or personal concerns. The university should balance genders when enrolling, and communities should be educated and raise awareness about the roles of male nurses. The government should increase the nurses’ salaries to attract more males to the profession. Further research should be conducted to find gender-neutral terms to address both male and female nurses. Communities should be informed and made more conscious of the duties played by male nurses. To encourage more men to pursue nursing, the government should raise nurses’ pay and find gender neutral terminology to refer to both male and female nurses.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, M.N.K.; and Methodology, M.N.K.; Software, T.I.R.; Validation, M.N.K. and T.I.R.; Formal analysis, M.N.K.; Investigation, M.N.K.; Resources, T.I.R.; Data curation, M.N.K.; Writing original draft preparation, M.N.K.; Writing review and editing, M.N.K.; Visualisation, T.I.R.; Supervision, T.I.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement
To ensure that the study is conducted in an ethical manner, we followed the declaration of Helsinki principles and sought ethical approval from the faculty of Health Sciences Research Ethics Committee at the University of Limpopo on 19 August 2024 (Ethical Clearance number TREC/1446/2024: UG.
Informed Consent Statement
All participants signed an informed consent agreement acknowledging their participation in the study procedures.
Data Availability Statement
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
| Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
