By Bae Hyun-jung

A 25-year-old Kim Jae-man is joyfully waiting for his official work appointment, unlike many of his peers who are still in school, the army or stay jobless after graduation.

Kim, a former computer major student, is among the 617 male nurses who passed the national exam for their nursing license this year.

Men accounted for more than 5 percent of the 11,717 successful applicants for the test, according to the National Health Personnel Licensing Examination Board yesterday.

The number of male junior nurses, since exceeding 200 for the first time in 2004, has rapidly increased during the last five years. Among the 2,687 male nurses as of the end of last year, 1,916 or 72 percent had passed the exam in the previous five years.

"I was one of the rare 10 male students amid the group of 200, when I first joined the nursing college," said Kim. "The number, however, increased year by year, and by the time I attended my on-the-job hospital training, male nurses were not so rare any more."

Kim, foreseeing problems in securing employment as a computer major, converted to medical nursing a few years ago.

"Many of the male nurses have come from other majors or career experiences," said Kim. "Instead of sticking to the past bias against male nurses, they rather see their visions in the professional medical career."

The success rate for male applicants also rose from 76.1 percent in 2004 to 92.1 percent this year, almost catching up with the total figure.

"Men no longer choose the nursing career from lack of other options, but from a clear purpose of becoming a medical professional," said an official of the examination board. "They tend to be more focused on the exam and achieve better results."

Fellow female nurses agree.

"I met some male colleagues during my hospital internship in 2002, most of them were older than the rest of us," said Moon Ji-seon, a former hospital nurse. "They were very sincere about their education and future career, and had a clear career goal on their newly-chosen path."

These qualified male nurses are highly demanded in hospitals and other medical fields.

"I am glad about the increase of male nurses," said Han Sang-mal, a nursing supervisor in an orthopedic hospital in Cheongju. "Not only do we need their physical strength, but our male patients often prefer to be tended to by men."

The increasing male nurse ratio boosts the social perspective on the general nursing career as well, Han said.

"People are dismissing the bias that the nursing job is submissive, a role to be filled mainly by women," she said. "As the roles of nurses are expanding from hospital jobs to schools, public health centers, and private nursing homes, such wider spectrum of manpower is to be regarded as highly positive."

The first official male nurse was Cho Sang-moon, who was licensed in 1962 and worked as a leading figure in the nursing field in the 1970s. Before Cho, only women could be qualified as nurses.

--The Korea Herald/ANN

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