Masculinity and nursing care: A narrative analysis of male students′ stories about care

•Male nursing students enter a profession with a feminised understanding of nursing care.•There is a lack of men's stories about care in the education programmes and in the profiling of the nursing profession.•This paper explores male students' stories about care and what meanings they are up against in the nursing profession.•We are of the opinion that the nursing programme must engage male students to share and reflect on their own stories.•We encourage nursing programmes to develop a contemporary curriculum with a variety of experience-based and updated curriculum stories.

Nursing education programmes and the nursing curriculum have been criticised for presenting an outdated and feminised description of care, which has had the effect of marginalising men, as well as hindering a more modern outlook for the profession. This article uses interview-based data from a qualitative study on Norwegian students' experiences in the first year of training. Using a narrative analysis method, the paper explores how male nursing students use stories to describe care and shows how their storytelling illustrates a way for men to negotiate their role in a feminised profession. The paper aims to deepen our understanding of the ways in which male students can challenge this historically female profession to broaden itself by including male-based caregiving as part of nursing care. In addition, the paper highlights the potential of stories and storytelling as a teaching and learning strategy in nursing education.