Gender issues in the nurse-patient relationship : the impact on management.

Abstract

The issue of gender is one central aspect upon which society's norms and values are built. With the nurse-patient relationship standing at the hub of holistic care, and with past literature providing plenty of insight into the gendered nature of the nursing profession, gender matters in the nurse-patient relationship surfaced as being wholly unavoidable. The aim of this research study was to explore gender issues in the nurse-patient relationship, and find out if such matters exert an impact on hospital management. A cross-sectional study was employed on a local general hospital (Mater Dei Hospital), using both instrument triangulation (questionnaires and focus group) as well as sample triangulation (patients, nurses, ward / bed managers). Questionnaires were disseminated to patients (n = 305) and nurses (n = 118), while a focus group was organized forward managers (n = 9) and bed managers (n == 1). Results revealed that both male and female patient preferred to be cared for by a nurse of their same sex, with this fact being more pronounced in female patients. Regardless of the nursing procedure involved, embarrassment levels were higher in the patient sample when a nursing task was performed by a male nurse. Nurses also reported higher embarrassment levels when nursing male (rather than female) patients, and like patients themselves felt more uncomfortable when carrying out intimate / semi-intimate procedures. Patients' age was found to be a very central factor affecting embarrassment, while prior experience was a variable found to affect both patients and nurses, though not in the same way. While ward managers seemed mostly concerned about staff allocation problems in their wards, bed management was on the other hand pre-occupied about patient allocation throughout hospital wards. It was concluded that nurses needed more training In the area of caring for patients of the opposite sex, because their inability to do this couples with patients' preferences for a same-sex health professional, often resulted in patients having to wait for an appropriate nurse for a procedure to be performed. The care of female patients by male nurses was in tum identified as being a main area of concern. Recommendations for better nurse-gender balance in hospital wards (especially mixed-gender wards) were put forward, while higher management was endorsed to pay special attention to both staff requests according to patients' gender needs as well as to gender in the context of a hospital admission ward allocation.