Share the Care project will provide new knowledge towards a less gender-segregated health care sector, a heavily female-dominated sector. The study will focus on the educational path of male professionals. It will provide recommendations on how to recruit and retain men in the nursing sector.
The project aims to increase the number of men who enrol and successfully graduate from nursing and licensed practical nursing (LPN) educational programmes. To meet this overall objective, measures will be implemented in: the University of Akureyri in Iceland, Østfold University College in Norway and LAB University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Secondary schools in geographical proximity to the universities involved, offering licensed practical nursing programmes, are also targeted in the project. Actions are largely based on recommendations from previous research “Men in Nursing Education: Mapping Educational Practices, and Student Experiences in Iceland, Denmark, and Norway”.
The project will implement a system to follow cohorts in nursing education and document reasons behind drop-outs and delays during the study, which will produce important knowledge to counteract the problem. Communication and recruitment material will be scrutinized in the effort to address gendered and ethnicity imbalance.
Reference groups of study and career counsellors will be formed to create knowledge and stimulate more men to engage in care work. These actions will be an important input for educational institutions and authorities on how to recruit and retain men in nursing education.
Project deliverables include a handbook and other educational and communication material, as well as special platforms for male students to minimize the risk of exclusion and alienation.
Nordregio coordinates the research activities, communication, and outreach with partners and the client, NIKK.
External project consultant – Maija Kāle, Research Consultant at Nordregio, Research Fellow at the Baltic Centre for Economic Policy Studies
