Do you/ did you have a Nurses Cap? Pin?

I never had a cap! Our School stooped requiring them about 2 years before I started at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. I do however have a pin. It is 10 K gold and cost me 110 bucks back in 1997, I had the option of choosing a cheaper pin, same design but made of only metal-10K overlay. My pin has two squares overlapping to kinda resemble a Star of David sort of the middle of the pin has EUP in red and Nursing around it--I think. I don't wear my pin cause it is too Heavy to attach to my name badg and I don't wanna lose it. On the back of this pin are my initials and the year that I graduated-1997 engraved.

I did not have hat, but my mother did. She wore the white cardboard stiff kind (I guess looks like the "flying nun" described earlier). My grandmother is sentimental and gave me mom's hat and bib/smock (?) that she wore in school at my get-together after my pinning ceremony. My pin is a heart, outlined in burgundy (school color) with a pine tree inside. I bought foam stuff from Hobby Lobby so I could wear it, my hospital employee pin and my NRP pin hanging below my badge.

I graduated in 1980. I am an LPN. I wear a cap - it is white with a green and gold stripe horizontal across the top. These are the college colors as well as the green representing licensed practical nursing. I wear white uniforms, white hose and white duty shoes. I am not as old a florence nightengale, - I am 43. I receive daily comments from my patients, and family members, how nice it is to see nurse that looks like a nurse. It is a personal choice, and I choose to wear what I wear.I work a medical floor and have no trouble with my cap. It stays very secure on my head. I shall be buried in it.

Didn't get a cap or cape but I do have a snazzy pin...it says "God Send Grace" on it ( a plea I uttered more than once) and BSN. It is like a shield with wings while unfortunately bent after being dropped a few dozen times. I treasure it and do wear it on my suit to events where I am doing public speaking. Nursing pins have an astonishingly high recognition factor.

The suggestion to go to a pawn shop near the school is a good one. You can also contact your school (if it is still around...easier for the university crowd than the diploma grads).

Oh how wonderful! I only wish that some of the others would follow your example! I do love the new colors and prints of the scrubs and think nurses look beautiful no matter what, but to see a nurse still "look" like a nurse is an absolute blessing to me!
Thank You!!
Julie

No cap from our school. I do have a pin that I wear, and worked very hard for.

Y2KRN

Still have 2 of my original caps. They are tricornered and made from old sheets from the hospital where I trained(diploma)by our pediatric nursing instructor in her spare time. We were capped after the first 6 months, 1 diag. black stripe after 1 year, the second stripe the second year and the third stripe the third year. After graduation we had three black velvet stripes horizontally on each edge of the cap. The cap represented the three hospitals that combined to become the hospital that I graduated from.
The pin is also thicornered, gold and has the hospital logo on it. Also has my initials and the year that I graduated on the back. Don't wear it for fear of loosing it.

Sure did have both. I wore my cap every shift I worked for many, many years. I was so used to having it on that I would forget it was there. Did I mind wearing it? No--I did not. There was not any question about it in those years. We all wore a cap (not many males in nursing back then but they did not have to wear a cap of any kind).

I quit wearing a cap when I started working on a unit where I had to wear scrubs. Felt kind of "naked" at first without my cap, pin, and stethoscope in my pocket. (We never wore our scopes around our neck--it was considered very unprofessional).

I had my cap until the last time I cleaned out my closets--finally gave it up.

I still have my pin. It is 14K gold oval with a pelican and her chicks (Louisiana state bird). It has a bar that hangs off of it that says Registered Nurse-- I think that is what it says--have not worn it in years.

The cap was white with a narrow cranberry colored velvet stripe over a wide gray cloth stripe. You would "glue" the velvet stripe on with KY jelly.

I'm an OLD new graduate ( graduated at age 48 last year). When I was growing up, a cap was the symbol for a nurse ( still is, when you see little dolls etc), so when I graduated, I bought my own cap. My instructor glued on the red velvet stripe for me (the cap my school used to issue just a few years ago). I wore it with pride a few times but I felt silly so I quit. The patients loved it, though.

It's sad when airline flight attendants look more polished and professional than RN's.

The hospitals love it when nurses can't be distinguished from housekeeping and aides. That way, no one can tell how few nurses are really on staff! Nurses, you've bought right into it!

I was told that caps were abandoned because they signified "servitude". What more honorable thing is there than to serve? Didn't Jesus serve others and instruct us to do the same?

I am pretty surprised that some nurses actually liked the caps. I have never actually seen a nurse wear one, except in books, and old movies.

I have seen a lot of the graduate composite pictures from when they still wore hats, and I always kinda laughed. But I am not sure if it is because of the hats, or the goofy uniforms my school used to wear, not to mention the hair styles from the 70s and 80s. I am glad that we do not have to wear the caps, mostly because i just put my hair in a pony tail or a barrette for clinicals. But I do think Nancy has a point, its hard to tell a nurse from a maint. man, or cafeteria worker, since they all wear scrubs.

I do think it is really neat how the different colors mean different things. I wonder what my nursing cap would look like if we still got them.