Senior Caribbean medical professionals warned that entrenched cultural attitudes are deterring men from entering nursing, leaving the profession overwhelmingly female at a time of critical shortages.
Speaking to reporters at the Nurses’ Pinning and Recognition Ceremony on Thursday at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Principal and Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Clive Landis, paediatrician and neonatologist Dr Clyde Cave, and Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Dr Damian Cohall, highlighted the critical shortage of male nurses and the wider consequences for the country’s healthcare system.
The graduates specialise in paediatric nursing, nursing education and nursing administration. Professor Landis praised their contribution, saying they are already strengthening Barbados’s health system through leadership, teaching and clinical roles. He also underlined the global demand for nursing specialists.
He said: “One thing you will rarely hear of is a nurse who is out of work. There is a global shortage of nurses, and even more so, specialised nurses with postgraduate qualifications. It behooves us as a country not only to train more specialised nurses, but also to offer nurses attractive terms and conditions to avoid attrition to other parts of the world.”
But while demand is high, the gender gap persists. In the class of 2025, only one male graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Paediatric Nursing, and in the class of 2024 there was just one male – from St Vincent and the Grenadines – completing a Master of Science in Nursing Administration.
Dr Cave, a consultant paediatrician, said the imbalance was deeply rooted in social and cultural expectations: “If you were to suggest to a young man in Barbados to go and do nursing, there are obstacles to overcome. I’ve had that with friends because I’ve suggested they do nursing rather than medicine, because we’re producing a lot of doctors and it’s hard for doctors to move around now. Each country has extra exams and qualifications, whereas nurses are in demand everywhere.
“They will pay for you to come, you choose whichever area, and you move on to your master’s and your PhD and you’ll still be called doctor of nursing, and there are major opportunities. But we don’t seem to see that. We still seem to think girls do nursing and maybe the guys stay on the block – and maybe that’s a social part of what we do, because women seem to be more together and successful in the dedication to pursuing academic careers.”
Dr Cave emphasised that nursing is one of the few courses at the Barbados Community College where students can still receive a stipend during study, which should make it more attractive to young men facing financial pressures.
He said: “Some young men particularly, the need to make money one way or another is a hard pressure on them. So to give it all up and go to school – and Barbados is not really set up to work and study like in North America.”
The paediatrician explained that while dropout rates were not high, the low number of male graduates reflected equally low enrolment figures.
He said: “It probably reflects the entry. And we’re looking for men to be paediatric nurses too, in particular, because children, you know, you still go on to the ward and the parents are there with a sick child. The team comes around and if the consultant is female, as many of ours are, they will still call her nurse. And the junior medical student, if he happens to be male, will get called doctor. So it’s not just a profession – it’s a reflection of the society and our expectations.”
Dr Cohall described the persistent gender divide as a striking anomaly within the medical sciences: “If I was to start by just highlighting the gender transition that we have seen within the space of medical training, which was historically and traditionally a male-dominated profession, we have seen the complete shift, where roughly 85 per cent to 90 per cent of our entering classes are females compared to males. Interestingly, nursing, which was always seen as a profession attended mainly by females, that gender transition has not occurred.
“It has essentially been maintained. And I believe that the reason for that is because nursing, more so than medicine, has always been gender-biased in terms of how the profession is presented to society. And I think this is something that could be interrogated. At the University of the West Indies, we have the Nita Barrow Unit, which focuses on gender studies. And this itself could be a very worthwhile thesis, because there are certain societal constructs that have maintained, while some have changed. And I think nursing is one of those where such societal constructs have not changed, have not evolved.” (SZB)
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