Nightingale Pledge and Nursing hats at pinning ceremony....

If your school is open to the possibility, there are some good updated versions of the Nightingale Pledge (not written by Flo, BTW -- written much later by someone else entirely) that are not as "icky" as the original.

Here is an earlier thread about alternative versions of "the pledge" --

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing...ge-204645.html

At our pinning, we told the two guys in the class they were welcome to wear caps if they wanted to Both declined.

Neither voiced a complaint about the Nightingale pledge...I think they (just like the ladies) didn't focus on the gender biases and just accepted it as being part of the pinning tradition. To be honest, I don't think any of us really noticed the gender biases...though we all did crack up in rehearsal while reading the purity part

You get graded on how well you memorize a pledge???!!!??? After reading these posts, I may have to take back all the comments I've made about goofy policies where I'm about to graduate from.

I don't see why "living (your) life in purity" is a gender-related issue ...

Why is living in purity and helping the doctor a "girlie" thing?

Nothing at all wrong with living in purity, but perhaps honesty, personal integrity, or maybe commitment to the patient and our professional ethics would be more important to the professional practice of nursing. And by the way, nursing is now officially not just for girls. It's the right thing to do to detach a nurse's commitment to the future from his or her body configuration.

Some traditions are the foundations of our future, while others hold us in the past. We're no longer the handmaidens of the physician. We're professional collaborators with legal accountability for being the final safety check on a physician's orders. As the pledge that brings these students into the profession, perhaps the future should be given more weight. I can't imagine an engineer taking a pledge to be the handmaiden of the architect.

For tradition, nothing beats wearing all white. I make a point of wearing white every day as part of my uniform. Not to symbolize purity, but to make sure that I am visible in my role. White also boosts the confidence of patients and families, whether we want to admit it or not. All white at the ceremony is fine, but remember not to wear colored undies. The hats have a nostalgia value that is hard to beat. The educational posters from Joint Commission still show nurses wearing hats. The lack of an equivalent hat for men reminds us of the past but I don't feel connotes an inferiority of the male nurses.

Practically speaking, the male students probably going to have to eat this one unless they can influence school leadership. (And be labeled troublemakers in the process.) I hope that we all remember this when we become nursing instructors and make sure our students don't get the same treatment.