The experience of gay male undergraduate nursing students: A qualitative exploration of professional lives

Clarke, Dave

Abstract

This thesis examines the experience of gay male student nurses during their university course, which leads to registration as a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Using in-depth qualitative interviews I focus on the student’s choice of nursing as a career and their performance of sexuality within the differing spaces of their clinical placements and the university. This thesis explores how these gay student nurses negotiate their gender, masculinity and gay sexuality within the professional boundaries of nursing. Furthermore, it identifies how these students negotiate issues of caring and the formation of therapeutic relationships with their patients, as men and gay men. The theoretical framing of the thesis draws upon Goffman's theories of presentation and performance of the self and Rubin’s 'charmed circle'. Alongside analysis of interview material, I explore the space of the hospital from a personal perspective and interrogate its gendered and desexualized organization through the lens of human geography. Moving between these two analytical frameworks, I examine and draw together the experiences of these students and examine their negotiation of the nursing role as gay men. I argue that the experience of these students and the negotiation of their sexuality as student nurses is fraught and precarious due to the complexities and boundaries of professional nursing roles in contemporary healthcare. Within the conclusion I address the implications of my research for gay nurses, patients, educators and for those who recruit nursing students.

Citation

Clarke, D. The experience of gay male undergraduate nursing students: A qualitative exploration of professional lives. (Thesis). Cardiff University. Retrieved from https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6025241

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 16, 2020
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6025241
• Publisher URL: http://orca.cf.ac.uk/66149/
• Award Date: Apr 30, 2014