Rhonda Brockett Interview, History 150 Spring 2017, Conducted by Nathan Strasburger, March 16, 2017.
A. This interview was conducted over the phone. I recorded the call with the app Tape- a- call. I used audacity to edit the interview because there was a minute of silence at the beginning because of how that specific app requires you to set up the call. I also edited the end when my grandma kept talking past my concluding remarks for the interview saying things like how did it go and please let me know if you need anything else. I asked her to prepare a quiet space on her end for the time we had allotted for the call. I went into a silent study room alone and posted a sign to ensure no one came in in the middle of the call to interrupt. One obstacle I had was connecting the calls. The tape-a-call app records all calls to their database, so you have to merge your original call with their number they provide, once that is done your call is recording. It took me about 3 times to finally get it set up correctly.

B. Born September 8th 1953 in Downy, California. She grew up in a large blue collar family that stemmed from Oklahoma and had found their way west building the railroad. Rhonda Brockett, born Rhonda Howell, was the oldest of seven. Started as a clinic medical assistant in the OB/GYN clinic in 1971. She went back to nursing school following a divorce while she was a single mom. When she went back to work she started at mount san Antonio community hospital in Pomona California. She later became a department head in the first hospital she worked in, Kaiser Permente. She worked 37 years before retiring and still maintains that she loved her time working there.

C. The research I did on was on the changing gender roles and perceived differences and females have when entering the medical workforce, what differences in career progression they faced, and gender bias in the medical education provided to males and females. My first source is “Nursing Civil Rights: Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps” by Charissa J. Threat. This source in particular gave me a lot of information that helped to understand the back-round of issues that would be discussed in the interview. This book gave a comprehensive look at the differences in how gender and race factored into how nurses were treated. Looking at studies that address these pressing issue’s provided me with a good insight on what kind of gender struggles my grandma may have faced. It was good to contextualize the time period and really get a sense of how both men and women perceived discrepancies in their education and working practice based on their gender. The second source I used was the book “Nursing and Men: A Gender Bias” by Joko Gunawan. Not only did this book give me insight into the gender bias’s that occurred for each respective sex, but it provided me with the basis for questions that deal with a negative stigma regarding male nurses. This was a crucial aspect of the interview and many of the observations made in the interview by my grandma about negative stigma’s regarding male nurses backup the assertions made by the book to a degree.

D.
NS: Alright, we’re on.

RB: Ok good.

NS: In your experience, how have gender roles changed in medicine/nursing over time?

RB: You know, when I first started working in the medical field in 1971, physicians were “gods”, they weren’t supposed be challenged, especially by a nurse. I think as cultural and generational changes occurred, women were more and more accepted as having a brain and that they could actually contribute to the patient’s care in other ways other than just changing the bedpan. (Women’s)Their roles have expanded and advanced degrees for RN’s were more readily available, as for men as well. But You really saw an influx in the late 80’s and early 90’s, of more men entering the nursing field, and we welcomed that.

NS: Now did you notice a difference in opportunities for women in the workplace?

RB: You know I did because my career spanned quite a long time Early on, men were almost always chosen to be department heads. They usually had a Bachelor’s degree, maybe a masters, and very little training in the medical field, but because they were men, they were of course chosen… As my career progressed, more and more women were given opportunities, especially if you were an RN with an advanced degree. Now I see opportunities are less about gender and more about qualifications. You know the job should go to the most qualified, however there’s still a little nepotism creeps in from time to time. And there’s no denying that once in a while you still see a trace of that good ol boys club, but it’s much much better than when I started.

NS: What, if any, obstacles did you face as a woman department head?

RB: You know, I was fairly lucky in that regard, because I started at the bottom and worked myself up through the ranks, and I had been actually been promoted to assistant department administrator before I became the department head. But Even though my capabilities and work ethic was well known, it was sometimes difficult to get taken seriously until something I had warned them about happened or a process I initiated succeeded really well…then they took notice. That was early, if I have been a man, you know they would have noticed sooner. And The perception that women were somehow less knowledgeable than men used to make me crazy. It did get better as I progressed in my career but it was still kind of difficult. Women just aren’t always taken as seriously as men, and that’s still a problem I think.

NS: How have nurses responsibilities and roles changed in the medical field over the course of your time working there?

RB: You know, wow…how long do you have? You know as I eluded to earlier, the roles have now become very diverse. Nurses are now considered an integral part of the health care team and have really had increased responsibilities at the bedside and actually at every level. You know nurses, actually have the ability, under protocols, to give advice. They’re able to actually answer questions from patients without having to check with the doctor they can actually question an order now from a physician and not be afraid and in fact nurses are mandated by their licensure, to verify anything they aren’t sure of, and, you know, our motto is harm no patient. Many nurses have gone on to get advanced degrees, MBA, RNP’s, etc. Some nurses are now lawyers. They, a lot of nurses now take extended courses in order to become certified in their particular specialty which gives them another level of knowledge, you know, for the patient. And I think that The physicians are younger now and the younger physicians are much more accepting of a collegial partnership with the nurses instead of a patronizing one. You know in the old days they’d eat you up and spit you out these old doctors but now it’s not like that. And Did you know that many physicians learn the technical side of medicine like shots, drawing blood, catheters, etc. they learn that from a nurse?

NS: From nurses? Yeah I can believe it.

RB: They don’t teach them that in medical school and which is crazy. And for me I think I see a higher level of respect now, with regards to nurses, regardless of their gender by the physicians. And did you know nurses are the number one trusted people in the U.S., did you know that?

NS: I did not.

RB: Yep, we are… so.

NS: Wow, you learn something new every day.

NS: In your time working, did you ever notice difference between care given by men vs women; if so where did they differ?

RB: So You know, I thought of this in terms of, just, in nursing because really in my observation over 37 years in the field, the only difference would be the patient preference. Most men that go into nursing are very empathetic and take really good care of their patients, as do the women. But, There’s always some nurses you know I’m sure you’ve met them, that never seem to get it, but that’s not going to change…but Personally I have had both men and women take care of me and they were both equally professional and empathetic…and that was good enough for me. So I really think its preference, by the patient. And like we’re going to be talking about later, men traditionally go into a field that’s busy busy busy, high adrenaline field. Women tend to stay at the bedside or they do teaching or things like that, and I think that’s just a personal preference for the genders.

NS: Did the medical field provide an accommodating schedule for women who were working mothers around the time you started nursing?

RB: Ok so, no. A big fat NO! I started working in 1971, in the nursing field. I had my children, your mother in 1974 and then Michael in 1977. You know and at that time women didn’t qualify for disability, because what, after all you’re just having a baby right? The year after I had Michael the law, now I’m talking about California I don’t know about other states, so the law changed, so you were then able to get disability six weeks after you had the baby but nothing before. But now in the state of California you have family leave, you get disability 4 weeks before and up to 8 weeks after, you have Maternity/Paternity leave. You know like I said we’re in California and you can get up to 3 months’ baby bonding. Some companies are giving as much as a year off.

NS: Jeez!

RB: How things have changed!!Now here’s an interesting side note – my husband at the time, who worked for the forest service, US Dept. of Forestry, was able to take days off for sick kids, etc. even then. So you gotta hand it to them! At least that part of the, you know, government got it right.

NS: Would you agree or disagree there is a negative stigma surrounding male nurses today? And what experiences have led you to this conclusion?

RB: I would disagree that there is a negative stigma surrounding male RN; s now, I think before there was probably some negative stigma just because you know as, when I started it wasn’t so bad. Did you know in the Korean war a nurse, a female nurse could go into the service and they would be officers, if you were a male nurse you were not given that privilege. Yeah, so there’s a role reversal right there, so unfortunately men in nursing, even back then, that was where the negative stigma happened. It took men a long time to come out of the shadow and be appreciated for the fact that they did want to do some nursing. So I think they’re now such an integral part of health care team, that they’re just now the norm, and like I alluded to before, men are great assets on the floor. You know You can talk about gender equality and how you should treat everybody different, but there are differences, there’s physical differences. And what you sometimes notice is that when you have a male nurse on the floor, they don’t get as much flak from the patients or the patients families as the females do. And I even noticed that in my ON department because I had an assistant who was a male and when he would confront a dissatisfied customer, a male customer, he wouldn’t get hardly any flack that one of us would get as a female because the men just assumed they could get away with it with the females and not with the males. So you see that sometimes in nursing it’s nice to have a male nurse around just because of the fact that they’re there and can help you if you need it. And like I talked about before a lot of male nurse’s kind of head for the high adrenaline busy pace, the men don’t like that slow pace, and sometimes there’s a lot of down time, you know, not always. So you see a lot of men going into the emergency room where it’s really fast paced, O.R., you know, a lot of men go into, like, heart surgery and things like that as a scrub nurse, and a lot of Flight RN; s are men, again, I think men and women are just wired different. And I think a lot Men like to be busy and they like that thrill of adrenaline. They’re also very good in psych, you know. And again, this is just from observation because you do see the interaction between the men and the women and the patients and so that’s my observation. I think there was a huge negative stigma earlier, I think it’s pretty much gone except in cultural areas. There’s some cultures that really like the macho and I’m just using that as an example I don’t know if that’s really true. But you do know that a lot of dads don’t want their boys to grow up to be nurses, let’s just get real, they see that as a very effeminate role and they don’t want that for their boy. But you know, again, it’s a great place, I mean it’s a good place for men to be able to do a good job and make a lot of money.

NS: What one thing would you change about gender roles in the medical field? Why did you choose this and what impact would it have for future trainee’s?

RB: You know, this is a hard one…because, you could really, I could do a whole paper on that. You know there’s many things I would have liked to have changed in the past, however we have made great strides in gender equality, especially in the facility I had the privilege of working, you know, the company I worked for, I worked for the same company for 37 years and they were fabulous. But the one thing I would actually like to see more men enter the nursing field and see the perception of them choosing a field like nursing be a more positive choice for young men. I think that, one of the reasons I chose that was because it’s clear that there’s a nursing shortage. You can become an RN in a relatively short amount of time (2-3 years) and your earning potential is actually very good as a new grad. Of course, that depends on your locale, but usually if you make a lot of money in a nursing area that means that the cost of living is high, so it’s, you know, based on that most the time. You know I know most women know this but it could be a place that could make a difference for men wanting to help people. I was one of 25 students in my class, and had 7 men, which is really unheard of at the time. You know think of the recruiting tool those men were to other young men, especially once they graduated. I think having a man who is a nurse as a role model would encourage more men to enter the nursing field. Especially maybe those that are in areas that are under served as far as medical, you know I’ve heard of places like offering scholarships to people to go and get their, even their, medical degrees, I mean think if you had a nurse practitioner, and maybe the community would help pay for their college tuition or whatever they needed and then they agree to come back and work in that area for a year or two to pay the community back. I mean you do see that a little bit but think of the things that could happen, how you could change the face of nursing and health care if you had a community involved and if you could get some underserved communities to help out and that could even be some under-privileged areas even though they’re for scholarships they don’t always look at a field like nursing. And I’m telling you is a pretty good way to start and you can go anywhere from there. There are so many areas that they could go into so that’s what I was thinking about.

NS: Wow, well thank you for your insight.

RB: Sure, anything else?

NS: Not that I can think of, is there any more points you think..

RB: I could make.

NS: Yeah Any real nagging issues around gender roles or any of that, that weren’t touched on by the questions?

RB: You know I think gender roles, like I said, I think gender roles have really come a long way. And part of that, is because now you have generation x you know, you have people coming, the doctors now that are graduating, even before I left, you see it, you know, there, they care more about home-life balance now than the older doctors did about making a lot of money.

NS: Interesting.

RB: And I think, yeah, it’s very interesting, and it goes for men and women, it used to be just the women because obviously the women had the babies. But now they want to be part of all that, they want to have a better home-life balance, a home-work balance, I’m sorry. And what I saw was that cultural shift from the older physician being the primary breadwinner getting all the overtime he could, in private practice that meant you were working 7 days a week blah blah blah, and where I worked, at Kaiser, you had a set schedule and you worked that schedule and things like that. And at the beginning the doctors wanted as much call as they could take, because I worked in the OB/GYN department and they had to do call and labor and delivery and things. But as you saw these newer doctors come in and more women, we’ve had a lot more women physicians come in and now it’s almost 50%, 50/50 now, which, again, is another shift in the gender identity because more and more women are going into medicine now and its more and more acceptable. You see a shift in how they want to have their home/ work balance out as opposed to the old traditional way, and I think that’s a good thing. And because they’re younger I think that, like I said, they have a more collegial partnership with the nurses, male or female, than they did before where I’m the doctor therefore my word is law, versus these guys that the nurse comes to them and say hey you know what I noticed this and this can we do this and this and they’ll go oh yeah go ahead. You know what I mean?

NS: Yeah.

RB: And that’s how it is. So that’s good. I mean I’m not saying there’s not still pockets of resentment and gender bias in some places but I think for the most part hat, I’m hoping, at least where I worked and what I saw, that you know, that was really much better. That would be my only other thing.

NS: Alright, well this concludes the interview, thank you for your time and insight.
I was very pleased with how the interview went. I got a lot of interesting information and insight into the nursing field. For improvements, I wouldn’t have hesitated like I did in stating one of the questions. There were a couple times where she started talking before I was fully finished asking my questions but I don’t think it detracts from the quality of the interview. A phone rings and a voice is heard at one point during the interview, it was on her end. Another thing I would focus on is transitioning from her answers to the next questions more smoothly, there are almost awkward pauses at some points because of that. Her diversions from the topic were often interesting or at least relevant to what we were talking about, so I believe that going off script a little bit to share more information made for a better interview as a whole. The more impromptu topics gave me information I wasn’t quite expecting to get from the interview, which is kind of the point of the interviews, to get firsthand information of experiences organically. The more information I could get, the better.

Works Cited

1. Threat, Charissa J. Nursing Civil Rights: Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois, 2015. Print.
2. Gunawan, Joko. Belitung Nursing Journal, Vol 3, Iss 1, Pp 52-53 (2017). N.p.: Belitung Raya, 2017., n.d. Print.