Emotional Competence in a Gender Perspective: The Experiences of Male Nursing Students in the Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinical Teaching

Abstract

In the Nursing Degree clinical teaching, gender stereotypes can influence the emotional experience of male students, with implications on their learning and competence’s development in a health care area that is predominantly female, since it is consensual that the emotional dimension of learning can stipulate the experiences of caring. The development of emotional competence promotes a greater capacity for adaptive resilience in the face of stressful situations; consequently, to be emotionally competent is to be able to find solutions in internal resources that emerge from emotions (especially its management) and from the motivation of each individual. This interrelation between emotions and gender prompts the understanding of the male nursing students’ emotional experience of provision of care in sexual and reproductive health. In order to understand this phenomenon, is proposed a research project with a qualitative approach, exploratory and descriptive. The data will be obtained from narratives written by nursing degree male student and also from clinical teaching supervisor nurses. Understanding students’ emotional experiences in clinical teaching of sexual and reproductive health, related to possible gender stereotypes and restrictions to care in this area, leading us to understand how emotion itself manages these genderized experiences, what sense it gives them and how it incorporates them into learning in clinical teaching.