Li Zunzhu saw another male colleague quit last month. The resignation was not the first he has seen during his nine-year career as a nurse at Peking Union Medical College Hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) - and it is unlikely to be the last.

His colleague decided to leave the job shortly after his girlfriend of eight years called off their wedding because her family refused to let her marry a male nurse.

"The girl's parents thought it was disgrace for a man to do nursing work that is menial and pays badly. My colleague was depressed and quit soon after the break-up," said Li, 31, who is now one of only three men still working in the 60-nurse ICU department.

As the nation prepares to celebrate International Nurses Day on Wednesday, health industry experts and those working in the profession said that little has changed in attitudes toward the country's male nurses, many of whom still experience severe discrimination.

"The discrimination comes from people's prejudices about the profession," said Ying Lan, deputy director of the Beijing Nursing Association. "People generally think nursing is a degrading job that requires no technical skills and offers a low salary. Women are considered more adept at doing this kind of work; people can't accept a man toweling a patient's body or cleaning up after them."

When Li was enrolled in Peking Union Medical College's school of nursing in 1998, he was one of only two men from 400 students. "I was surrounded by women. I felt like a boy who'd accidentally been sent to an all-girls school," he joked.

He recalled that when the class was divided into groups to practice injecting needles into each other's arms, none of his female classmates were willing to partner up with him. "I had to practice with the only other guy in the class," said the lean, 1.8-meter-tall man, who hails from Shandong province. "Maybe the girls thought us men were too clumsy and would hurt them."

The two men quickly became the most popular test subjects ahead of the final injection examination as the girls realized male veins are thicker and therefore easier to find with a needle.