An exploration of the lived experience of male Health Visitors: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The government drive to increase the national health visitor (HV) numbers in 2011 (Department of Health (DH), 2011) encompassed targeting all entrants on the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register, from all disciplines and genders. There was a specific drive to recruit men, resulting in men coming forward for the first time to train locally as HVs. The catalyst for this study was a male HV student having a challenging time within the placement setting. This made me wonder what it must be like for the male HVs undertaking the HV programme of education and subsequently working in the community, both as a colleague, to the predominantly female workforce and as a professional, delivering a traditionally female service to the community population.
The research design, following a constructivist methodology, was chosen to acquire the lived experience of the male HV through an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) lens. Semi-structured interviews for data collection were conducted, verbatim transcription was completed and the six-phase approach to analysis, advocated by Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2009) was used to extrapolate findings.
The findings provided fourteen themes and four superordinate themes as follows: Gender as a factor in health visitor service delivery, The cultural marginalisation of fathers in England: health visitor service impact, Progressive career choice and Evolutionary health visitor practice and eclectic workloads. The discussion considers the theories of gender role conflict and novice to expert against the findings.
Conclusions drawn together, from the personal insightful narratives, demonstrate that male health visitors do have an impact on and are impacted by HV service delivery. Many of the participants entered the HV profession initially to find a better way of working but then embraced the role advocating for children, families and raising the profile of fathers.
This is an original contribution toward the development of knowledge as there are no other studies looking at the lived experience of male health visitors. This study can be seen as a benchmark toward future study around the subject matter.