Portray popular Irish male nurses (5)
I believe the answer is:
paint
'portray' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'popular irish male nurses' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'popular' could be 'in' and 'in' is found within the answer.
The remaining letters 'pat' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
(Other definitions for paint that I've seen before include "A pint of liquid decoration" , "Artist's material" , "Colouring substance" , "Apply a coat of colour" , "Colouring matter for decoration" .)