Nursing student Amiri Saadiq (left) talks with classmate Ethan Stinson in the simulation suite at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing.Through clinical rotations, Saadiq has found that the work suits his disposition.
"I think I'm pretty personable for the most part," he says.Andi Rice for NPR hide caption Stay up to date with our Up First newsletter sent every weekday morning.Men are largely missing out on one of the hottest professions in the U.S.
right now: nursing.For registered nurses alone, the Labor Department projects there will be 189,000 job openings each year for the next decade.But only 1 in 8 nurses are men.There have long been efforts to rewrite the script around nursing — to push back on the idea that it's women's work.
Now, the economy is helping, too.With diminishing opportunities in male-dominated industries like manufacturing and software engineering, nursing has emerged as a stable alternative and a solid pathway to a middle-class life.Nursing students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are already experiencing what it's like to be in demand.
Ethan Stinson chose to go into nursing his first year of college, drawn by the job security.He's headed for a job in a hospital psychiatric unit.
"I think I'm pretty calm under stress," he says.Andi Rice for NPR hide caption Ethan Stinson will graduate next month and go straight into a job in the psychiatric unit at the university hospital."I feel like it's really easy to get a psych job if you're a nurse," he says.
"They're hunting people all the time."His classmate Hatim Nasser, whose family had wanted him to study computer science, has a job lined up in the university hospital's heart and lung transplant intens...