All-Male Staff Serves Veterans With Care

All endoscopy teams are unique. The team at a veteran’s endoscopy center in Jacksonville, Fla., however, is particularly unique. The endoscopy staff of the Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic is all male, quite the oddity in a female-dominated profession.

This difference has not passed under the radar, said Diego Pagan-Ortiz, RN, MSN, nurse manager at the center, and a member of the American Assembly of Men in Nursing (AAMN).

“One difference that I have noticed of our team is that this team is helping to change the stigma of men not being caring and sensitive,” Pagan-Ortiz said. “When other male nurses hear about our team, they want to join us. In other words, we are helping to recruit more male nurses into our system.”

However, building an all-male nursing staff was not done on purpose. The team used to include two female nurses, but they left to pursue career advancements. The team has been all male for one year.

“I do not think that adding a female nurse would change our demographics at all,” Pagan-Ortiz said. “We currently have an opening in our department and we have two strong applicants, both are female.”

The organizational culture at the Jacksonville center is one of collaboration, quality, commitment and advocacy to the veteran population, according to Pagan-Ortiz.

“It is a culture which strives for excellence, trust, respect, and compassion with the objective of enhancing the veterans’ health and that of their families,” he added.

The staff is trained in many procedures, including flexible sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, enteroscopy, etc. The staff may also start taking on other procedures such as liver biopsies, manometries, paracentesis and transfusion of Remicade to patients with Crohn’s disease.

The VA Outpatient Clinic at Jacksonville, Fla., is one of two large satellite clinics within the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System. The gastroenterology clinic, which includes the endoscopy department, is relatively new.

The department is staffed from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and from the beginning of the day to the end, RNs and technicians have positive and caring attitudes to the veterans, Pagan-Ortiz said.

The staff performs procedures from 7 a.m. to noon and in the afternoon they provide consultations and evaluations. The staff of eight handles approximately 150 procedures and 250 to 300 consultations a month. The crew is soon going to add another gastroenterologist, which will allow the staff to increase to 300 procedures per month.

The Jacksonville endoscopy department includes two procedure rooms, six recovery beds and three pre-procedure areas in which the initial nursing assessment takes place. There are many tricks to the trade that the staff has acquired so they can run the department more efficiently.