Male students' motivations to choose nursing as a career

Abstract

Men comprise approximately 11% of the nursing population globally, and 9.1% of the South African (SA) nursing workforce. Nursing workforce shortages require strategies for recruiting new nurses, including more males. A university in the Western Cape Province, SA, reported an increased enrolment of males to the nursing programme, and wished to understand the factors motivating this, in order to improve the recruitment of males.To determine factors that motivated male students to choose nursing as a career, and to determine any association with demographic characteristics.Data were collected from a stratified sample of 218 male undergraduate nursing students at a residential university in the Western Cape, using a structured questionnaire to determine their demographic profile and extrinsic and intrinsic motivating factors behind their choice of field of study.