Forced wearing of nursing cap.

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  1. Is this sexist or gender bias?

    • 95
      yes
    • 101
      no

196 members have participated

I'm a senior registered nursing student and our school has a pinning ceremony to mark the completion of our program.

Our class contains about 20% men, equal split of black and white in both genders. I am approaching 50 and this is not my first career.

The director of the nursing program gave the class the "option to vote" on the wearing of a nurses cap for the pinning ceremony and our class photo. The majority of the class voted to wear the cap, men excluded from wear.

I do not wish to wear the cap and have been told by program director that "the class voted to wear it and you have to or you will not be able to participate". I understand the cap is traditional, but I feel it calls specific attention to my gender and not my success in passing nursing school. I've worked very hard to get where I'm at and I wish to celebrate my success with a pinning ceremony.

I truly feel that being "forced" to wear the cap is discriminatory based on my gender alone. Period. The guys are not made to wear them because they are considered "feminine or female dress", and I don't wish to be "forced" to dress as such either (we are all wearing pant-scrubs by unanimous vote).

I respect the choice of anyone else that wishes to wear the nursing cap. I don't and won't presume to force my opinion on them.

Has anyone else had this experience?

Does anyone know of any precedence against forced wearing of nursing caps to participate in school activities, etc? Any input on how else to proceed in approaching my school administration would be appreciated.

I welcome the input from both genders, seasoned and new nurses, students and educators, and anyone else on here that wants to chime in.

I ask only, that you be nice to me and each other. This is very serious for me.

Specializes in Nursing Education, CVICU, Float Pool.
They were not cloaks they were wool capes that came down to your fingertips.( when I think of cloaks I think of druids chanting..or a group of witches dancing around a fire....no disrespect to my pagen friends...who DO wear cloaks). You wore it to and from the hospital to the dorm or your home. If you were a traveling nurse or worked with a doctor who made house calls (yes,nurses did that back in the day), you wore it when you visited the home. I remember as a little girl seeing a nurse in a poster add calling for nurses to serve during World War II. I thought she was beautiful....like a hero ready to fly into action. Sadly, my cape is long gone. My children and grandchildren used to play with it pretty rough..and the clasp broke...and then the it started to look pretty ratty and I couldn't have worn it even if I wanted to! In my day, your uniform had to look crisp and clean. My cap, on the other hand, is a different story. I worked hard for my cap and I still wear my cap whenever I work. To me, its a symbol of my accomplishment. Young people may think its sexist or out dated or impractical....that's fine...it may mean that to you...but it doesn't mean that to me. As long as I'm a practicing nurse I shall continue to wear my cap with the same pride as the day I earned it.[/quote']

Go ahead! HazelLPN!

They were not cloaks they were wool capes that came down to your fingertips.( when I think of cloaks I think of druids chanting..or a group of witches dancing around a fire....no disrespect to my pagan friends...who DO wear cloaks). You wore it to and from the hospital to the dorm or your home. If you were a traveling nurse or worked with a doctor who made house calls (yes,nurses did that back in the day), you wore it when you visited the home. I remember as a little girl seeing a nurse in a poster add calling for nurses to serve during World War II. I thought she was beautiful....like a hero ready to fly into action. Sadly, my cape is long gone. My children and grandchildren used to play with it pretty rough..and the clasp broke...and then it started to look pretty ratty and I couldn't have worn it again even if I wanted to. In my day, your uniform had to look crisp and clean. My cap, on the other hand, is a different story. I worked hard for my cap and I still wear my cap whenever I work. To me, its a symbol of my accomplishment. Young people may think its sexist or out dated or impractical....that's fine...it may mean that to you...but it doesn't mean that to me. As long as I'm a practicing nurse I shall continue to wear my cap with the same pride as the day I earned it.[/quote']

You go!!

I only have a cap from when I graduated 3 years ago

It sits proudly with my lamp on my bookshelf.

My cap is on my dresser, yellow-brown and dusty. I actually liked wearing it, but my first job was in a PACU and nobody wore them there even eleventysebben years ago, and my second job was in an ICU and nobody wore them there either, and by the time I left there nobody wore them anywhere else I went.

I used to wear mine to work on Halloween (I came as a nurse). One year I heard this booming voice call down the hallway after me, "Hey, (name of my college on the other side of the country)!!" I whirled around, wondering who the heck would know my (fairly distinctive) cap way out here. Turned out that one of the Fellows and his buddy the attending had done their med school and early residency in one of the university teaching hospitals back there and knew it well.

Specializes in Med-Surg, Emergency, CEN.

I was angry about NOT wearing a cap to my graduation. I didn't just graduate from some stupid underwater basket weaving school, I graduated from Grid-Iron NURSING School and I wanted to have it known! :nurse:

Specializes in ED, Telemetry,Hospice, ICU, Supervisor.

Grid-Iron Nursing School? Is that some kind of football & nursing hybrid? When are the play offs?

Specializes in Med-Surg, Emergency, CEN.
Grid-Iron Nursing School? Is that some kind of football & nursing hybrid? When are the play offs?

See that splatter across my helmet? That's part of the other team... ;)

Specializes in Nursing Education, CVICU, Float Pool.

See that splatter across my helmet? That's part of the other team... ;)

The other team being the instructors.....? Lol.

I'm a chef. Part of my uniform, (like it or not), is the tower hat. It's like wearing a coffee filter on my head. I feel silly walking around with it. But, it's a symbol of a profession that I'm proud to be a part of, and a way to keep hair out of a customers' food. You should view wearing a nurse cap the same way. It's a symbol of nursing, it's original purpose was to keep hair out of a patients' face, & it's simply a part of uniform.

Personally, I'm a huge proponent of the nurse cap. They make women look sexy. That isn't sexist, misogynistic, or discriminatory.

I don't buy the arguments of how it keeps falling off, or how it's a bacteria trap.

The nurse cap was modeled after a nun's habit, (how'd you like to wear one of those?). Like I said before, it was intended as a way to keep long hair out of a patient's face. Then one day, a nurse decided to let her hair touch her collar. Another day, a nurse decided to buck tradition and not wear her hat during her shift. That sparked a revolution, and suddenly nurses everywhere decided they didn't want their caps.

The nurse cap will (unfortunately) never come back. But to any nurse anywhere who wants to or still wears one, I salute you. I encourage new nurse grads to wear their caps once, then toss them if they so desire.

Specializes in Forensic Psych.

Personally, I'm a huge proponent of the nurse cap. They make women look sexy. That isn't sexist, misogynistic, or discriminatory.

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Yes it is. It's all of the above. And a little creepy, too.

Just so there are no hard feelings, nurses are cool, they do a VERY important job, they deserve respect.

I'm a chef. Part of my uniform, (like it or not), is the tower hat. It's like wearing a coffee filter on my head. I feel silly walking around with it. But, it's a symbol of a profession that I'm proud to be a part of, and a way to keep hair out of a customers' food. You should view wearing a nurse cap the same way. It's a symbol of nursing, it's original purpose was to keep hair out of a patients' face, & it's simply a part of uniform.

Personally, I'm a huge proponent of the nurse cap. They make women look sexy. That isn't sexist, misogynistic, or discriminatory.

I don't buy the arguments of how it keeps falling off, or how it's a bacteria trap.

The nurse cap was modeled after a nun's habit, (how'd you like to wear one of those?). Like I said before, it was intended as a way to keep long hair out of a patient's face. Then one day, a nurse decided to let her hair touch her collar. Another day, a nurse decided to buck tradition and not wear her hat during her shift. That sparked a revolution, and suddenly nurses everywhere decided they didn't want their caps.

The nurse cap will (unfortunately) never come back. But to any nurse anywhere who wants to or still wears one, I salute you. I encourage new nurse grads to wear their caps once, then toss them if they so desire.

Okay, you realize there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of male nurses, right?

And most of the old pics of nurses in caps I would not describe as "sexy". "Silly" comes to mind personally, but maybe it's just a generational thing. Even when I was a little kid, nurse caps were already a thing of the past. I associate that look with old, old movies and children's books.

Specializes in Dialysis.
Hey OP, I declined the pictures. What would I want a picture for??? I dunno. I'm a grown up, I'm not going to pass them around to relatives like I did when I was in gradeschool, what the??

I didn't buy a pin. I have a sorority pin from my first college stint (again, I've grown up since). Don't know where any of my sorority stuff is.

I went to our pinning which I also thought was a left over from childhood. Turns out 8 other classmates didn't go, I just thought I'd need to so I could be assured of a reference letter or two - felt like a fool. No party hats require there. But they were for the pictures.

I paid for a degee. I don't need to do the silly stuff. There was a college-wide formal graduation for people to go to anyway, I didn't go to that.

I am a second degree nurse. Just done with college wasting my time and money.

I don't think a pinning ceremony should be considered "silly" or something that you should feel foolish about. It is to honor the graduating students and gives them a right of passage into nursing. It has been a tradition for over a 1,000 years. A college-wide formal graduation is not even personal in my opinion. The pinning ceremony is intimate, with your classmates, teachers, and family. Maybe since you've already "been there, done that" with another degree, you don't care, but to me, I am a 21 year old who will be graduating with my first college degree and I am very proud of myself and want others to recognize my accomplishments.

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