The share of men in the U.S. registered nursing workforce increased from 8% in 2015 to 11.2% in 2022 before declining to 10.4% in 2024, according to the AACN’s Nursing Workforce Fact Sheet, updated in May.
The picture on a hiring platform tells a similar story. On RegisteredNurse.jobs, which lists approximately 70,000 active nursing positions nationwide, fewer than 5% of candidate profiles created to date belong to men.
The timing of the AACN data is worth noting: The 2024 snapshot captured a workforce still recovering from pandemic-era strain and elevated travel nurse reliance, and researchers caution against placing too much weight on a single data point.
However, for hospital and health system leaders building a sustainable nursing workforce, the data is worth watching. Two leaders say the pipeline gaps are identifiable and the strategies to address them already exist.
Why the gap persists
Margie Zyble, CHRO at UC Health in Cincinnati, told Becker’s the shortage of male candidates starts well before the hiring stage.
“From what we hear in the market, nursing is still widely viewed as a female-dominated profession. Men don’t necessarily consider it as an option, and male candidates don’t always see a clear path for themselves,” she said. “Our nursing career pipelining and recruitment teams consistently see men gravitate toward areas such as the ED, ICU and procedural specialties.”
Historically, UC Health’s nursing co-op programs have drawn few male applicants, a pipeline problem she says that originates earlier than hiring.
Marissa Jamarik, DNP, RN, vice president of patient care services and CNO at Beaufort (S.C.) Memorial, has observed the same specialty clustering. She also has a direct window into the question: Her husband is a nurse who has moved from the ICU into an educator role at Roper St. Francis Healthcare in the Charleston, S.C., area. When she asked him what would have stopped him from considering nursing, his answer matched what she hears from others.
“Men often don’t see themselves reflected in nursing,” Dr. Jamarik said. “It’s still a predominantly female field, so things like recruitment material, or the people speaking even at the top of nursing organizations, are still predominantly female. That still exists today, like it did many years ago.”
She also pointed to the resurgence of the trades as a relatively new competitive factor. Technical programs offering well-paying careers without nursing school tuition debt have rebuilt strong enrollment over the past decade, and men are choosing that path.
“I think men pick that,” she said. “I think that’s a competitor that might not have been there 10 years ago.”
Where the pipelines are
Both leaders pointed to specific talent pools where interest in healthcare already exists and men are disproportionately represented.
For Beaufort Memorial, the most immediate opportunity is among those in the military. The hospital’s location provides close ties to military affiliates, and Dr. Jamarik described a deliberate effort to help service members transition from roles as corpsmen or medics into the healthcare workforce. The hospital’s PATH program supports entry-level employees through scholarships to pursue higher degrees.
“Locally, we also have a lot of military, so for us it’s about our ability to help transition people in the military that might be interested in coming out of their role as a corpsman or a medic and coming into the healthcare field, whether that be as a technician, and then we help them through school,” she said.
Ms. Zyble echoed the importance of branding and visibility, noting that UC Health sees opportunity in framing nursing recruitment messaging around the high-skill, fast-paced nature of the work, including critical care, emergency services and procedural roles, and ensuring male nurses appear in recruitment materials, events and storytelling. Highlighting the system’s level 1 trauma center, she said, is a strong differentiator and attraction point.
Dr. Jamarik also flagged EMS and fire partnerships as an underutilized channel. Firefighters already rotate through hospital departments for training; the question, in her framing, is whether systems are actively recruiting through that exposure.
“How do we use that as a recruitment platform as well, I think, is an incredible opportunity,” she said. “Some targeted recruitment to those groups in particular, where people already know they’re interested, is a great strategy.”
There is also an internal pipeline that often goes overlooked: men already working in ancillary roles such as respiratory therapy, radiology and the cath lab who have expressed interest in nursing but have not been formally pointed toward it.
“That’s sort of an untapped opportunity if they have an interest,” Dr. Jamarik said. “They’re already working in healthcare, so how do we introduce them to nursing as an opportunity as well?”
Retention and representation
Once men are in the workforce, retaining them requires the same foundations that matter for any nurse: healthy staffing models, flexible scheduling, professional governance and upward mobility. But Dr. Jamarik noted that hospitals and health systems also have to get the smaller things right.
“Sometimes it’s the little stuff,” she said. “My husband pointed out more than once, if you’re going to give out pink coffee cups for National Nurses Week, could you think about the guys? There has to be a constant acknowledgment that part of that needs to be called out separately, and ensuring that we’re meeting what they want for reward and recognition.”
She argued that giving underrepresented groups a seat in clinical governance committees is necessary, not optional.
“Having underrepresented groups on those committees is vital, because what’s going to serve one isn’t going to serve another,” she said.
Dr. Jamarik framed the broader conversation in terms of what the industry owes its workforce and its communities.
“As a healthcare leader, any CNO would agree that we have a responsibility to build a nursing workforce that is strong, sustainable and reflective of the communities that we serve,” she said. “Opening doors wider, not narrower. It’s a metric that bears watching.”
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