[MunsonNV]

It is the law in our state of Nevada that all staff wear a name badge that has your name and title clearly readable from 2 ft away. Clean and pressed uniform is expected, but, of course, there are those who abuse this!

[nurses4Bush]

I'm a student, where I do my clinicals in Massachusetts, nobody wears name tags. So you don't know if someone is a nurse, a tech, housekeeping or a Surgeon. Unfortunately, if I don't know the person I tend to profile them by their sex. If they're a male, I'll assume they're a doctor, and if female a nurse......and I'm a male nursing student!!! But I've been in other facilities in MA and RI and MOST people wear the name tags. I agree, however, some standards need to be applied regarding nursing uniforms. Like what has been written. The business industry has standards even dress down standards....the same should apply in healthcare, particularly nursing.

[4nurses]

The only dress code that I think hospitals should have is that the nurse look clean, neat, tidy, professional and comfortable for the job that they are doing.

The fake finger nails must go however, found one stuck to a patients bum one after noon. Not mine I don't wear them.

Why hospitals are concerned with such an issue at this time is beyond me!

Still cannot figure out how to vote. Is there a place to actually cast a yes/no vote?



4nurses :

[HomeNurse4kids]

Originally posted by mjlrn97
Again I say: those who believe nurses should wear whites or uniforms, ought to wear them. Enjoy wearing them, glory in it, look down your nose at the rest of us slobs......but PLEEEEEEEEASE don't try to make us conform!

I may not LOOK like the starched-white professional nurse in my patterned work tops and solid colored pants. However, I can catheterize anything, hit the spindliest vein with a 22g angio from across the room, and smooth over some of the most ruffled feathers with a few well-chosen words. I can counsel the grieving, teach the willing (and sometimes even the UNwilling), and coach the newly ambulatory total-knee patient with the best of 'em. And I'm sorry, but wearing whites or a uniform doesn't make you a nurse any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

And that's all I have to say about THAT.

So eloquently put! and I would have to agree. However, I also agree that it IS important for the patients to easily differentiate between nurse and housekeeping/dietary/therapist/etc......

[sbic56]

At a time when hospitals are having such a hard time finding nurses, I think it is pretty irresponsible of them to mandate some sort of dress code on top of it all. Professionalism is not about how white the uniform is, but how right the care is. I just left a position where administration insisted on color coded scrubs to indicate who was who on the floor. To make matters worse, the nurses had to wear white scrub tops. Cookie cutter perfection. Yuk. I felt like I was working at Burger King. Utter foolishness, IMO.

[Rock]

Nobody said it has to be white. But it should be uniform. Patients, family, etc. must be able to identify who is a RN,
who is LPN, who is janitor.

Enough said!!

[angellavg]

the hospital that i work at requires us to wear white pants and any kind of top. a lot of the nurses wear faded t-shirts, white jeans, etc. i think we would look better if we all wore scrubs, colored or not. it is a very small hospital (24 beds) and the only people on the floor is the RNs and LPNS, so there wouldn't be a big problem with who is who. all other departments wear street clothes, maybe with a lab jacket over top.

[ImaStork]

Originally posted by SmilingBluEyes
I would LOVE every hospital to mandate NO fake/long nails, ban the use of perfume and smoking on the job, and have SOMETHING to say about loud makeup/hair and GUM POPPING!!!. I don't care the uniform (LONG AS IT IS CLEAN!!!), the UNIFORM does make the nurse really to me. But these other pet peeves of mine bug me more than silly uniforms do. I can't stand the above....they are annoying, sometimes hazardous, and definately detract from a professional image...they have NO place in professional nursing, period.

come to work at my hospital... we have the ban on fake nails, and the perfume. The smoking is pretty hard since u have to be 20 ft from the building. We all wear the same color scrubs on my l & d unit, they are furnished by the hospital, we can pick our own cover jacket. We also have to wear our picture ID where all can see it it has our name and title on it. Introducing ourselves to the patient is also one of the interventions on our nursing care plan. Each room has an erase board on it we put the name of the RN caring for the patient that day, the LVN if appliable and the Nursery staff who has her baby.

[VivaLasViejas]

What I'm wondering is, why should NURSES have to change what they wear to conform to a certain standard? Who decided that housekeeping and dietary should wear scrubs, anyway? They're the ones who ought to change, as they are not clinical staff and should never be mistaken for such!

Where I work, housekeeping staff all wear a black and gold polo shirt that has the company logo, with a dark red cobbler apron and dark pants or jeans. The dietary staff wear similar dark red polo shirts and blue cobbler aprons. Only clinical staff wear scrubs or uniforms of the wearer's choice, except for OB-GYN staff who wear tops with baby-foot prints and blue scrub pants, and surgical staff who wear greens.

We don't have much of a problem with patients being unable to differentiate between clinical and ancillary staff members. We are supposed to identify ourselves anytime we walk into a room (e.g. "Hi, I'm so-and-so, and I'm your nurse this afternoon").
Plus, our name badges have our picture, name and title right out there for all the world to see. I personally have never had a patient question my competency or professionalism, and yes, I wear fun scrubs with kitties and seals and other cute critters on them. But again, we don't have issues with ancillary staff dressing like the nurses and nurses dressing like the cafeteria ladies!

[jjjoy]

For the average hospital nursing staff, I'm in favor of uniforms. Easy identification is important. As the nurse, you are the center of all patient care. You want others to be able to spot you and to come to you first for issues related to your patients.

The fact that doctors and lawyers don't wear uniforms and that fast food staff do has nothing to do with it. What nurses wear should only be determined by what's best for nurses and their patients. Staff nursing is a specific kind of work. The work is physical and can be messy, thus making otherwise professional clothes (eg, suits) impractical. Nurses provide service and coordination and thus need to be easily identified by patients, family and other hospital personnel. Add to that the fact that nurses are busy moving about the unit, mingling with other staff and that the nursing staff changes from shift to shift and day to day. Uniforms are the easiest way to provide quick identification of who the nurses are.

I do like the comparison to police officers and security staff. I like to be able to identify them from a distance by their uniform. I also wouldn't want the security uniforms to look just like police uniforms. I want to be able to tell from the uniform whether or not they are police officers or private security personnel. Also note that investigators don't wear the uniforms. I don't think it's because they are "more professional" than the beat cop. It's just that the uniform serves a certain function in the public that isn't necessary for all positions in law enforcement.