China has more than 3.5 million registered nurses, but only 1 percent of them are male. With men having obvious physical advantages, Chinese hospitals are highlighting the imbalance on Friday, International Nurses Day.

At Central Hospital in Taiyuan, north China’s Shanxi Province, only 13 of the 700 nurses are male.

Ma Zhenjiang, 26, has been working as a nurse in the hospital’s hemodialysis ward for three years. He said patients used to doubt him but his devotion eventually won him a lot of respect. 

According to Pang Guifeng, deputy head nurse at Central Hospital, male nurses are happier taking on emergency work, which often occurs at night and requires more physical power. And they rarely ask for leave, Pang said.

Zhang Hongxiang is another male nurse working in Central Hospital’s Neuro ICU. He said he is often called upon to help lift patients, task which his female colleagues often find difficult.

China’s ratio of male-to-female nurses is way below developed countries, where around 20 percent of nurses are men. 

Social bias is the main reason. It is an unpopular profession for men in China, said Li Xiangyun, director of Central Hospital’s nursing department. Some of its male nurses have resigned simply because their family or friends don’t think it’s a decent job. Li wants society to give more support to male nurses.

Decades ago, many believed that nursing was a job for women. Today, there is a lot of hope in China's healthcare industry that more men can be recruited to provide better service.