Re: Accessories for graduation
Boy, the more things change the more they stay the same. I graduated nurising school in 1977. They didn't know what to do with us during school years and they didn't know what to do when we graduated! Most of us said just let us not attend and send us our diplomas. They would have no part of it. We simply were pinned by the faculty and our family shook our hands. That was it.
On the subject of caps though we did have quiet the run in. Remember now, male nurses were an odditity back then. The local hospital where we all trained actually extended us jobs and we went to work. The DON however was a graduate of the 1939 class and still had the same mindset. She wore a starched white dress uniform and a nursing hat that looked like a pie tin for a chessecake with ruffles. It was actually kewl. Somehow, all of us made it through our training and graduation and she didn't know the hospital had hired us. There was so many of us, about 15, in the new graduate class (graduate nurse they call them now) that all of sudden she had a fit! She put out a memo that all RNs will begin to wear their nursing caps and that no RN except in OR or like area would be exempt. It was a direct attack on all the RNs. By the way, we were not allowed to wear scrubs back then, only white pants and white shirts with our name tags and nursing pin. You had to have your nursing pin on at all times! She gave us two weeks to comply. Finally, the Friday before the Monday the policy was to go into effect I took a Greek Captain's fishing hat, white, and glued two large RN letters to the bib. When she came to the unit (MICU) I showed her my Nursing Cap. She was stunned. She asked me where I graduated and I told her the local nursing school. She said that she knew it was not the official cap that she has seen the official cap and that this was not. I told her no, I had gone to the DON of the school and gotten this one approved for the male RNs. She was horrified. She said she did not believe me and she would call her. I told her please do. I was mortified that I was going to be fired because my little joke was going to blow up in my face and I was going to get fired or worse. On Monday I got called to the DON office. She litteraly had a little bench you sat on in the hallway until she called you in. I sat out there for at least 45 min. Finally, she called me in and told me to sit down. She told me that in her 30+ years she had never had anyone question her authority or so challenge anything the way I had with my proposed solution to her policy. She glared at me the entire time. I think I was so scared that I would have cried except I thought that would only make her madder. She then threw a memo across the desk at me and told me to read it. I just new it was my pink slip. Instead, it was a memo that stated that the policy had been studied and the decision was made to reverse it based on all of the complaints from the nursing staff and the support of the physicians! She then told me that I would be the death of her and I should leave her office immediately and never darken her door again! I wore the hat for about two weeks (night shift) and everyone had a good laugh. The DON retired a year later.
So do what you want to have significance for you. Buy yourself a gold name tag with RN on it and have your family pin that on you. That is all that is important, once you gradauate (and pass the boards) you are a RN. You don't need a hat, a pin, or a cap. You need to know in your soul that you are just as much a nurse as anyone else.
Good luck from the old guys that have been there before you.
Re: Accessories for graduation
Re: Accessories for graduation
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