Socializing after work in your scrubs

Nurses Relations

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Yuck! Who does this? So my husband and I are on a long weekend in Taos, NM. Friday night we were at a local bar listening to a band. In walk a group of women in their mid-twenties. They appeared to have just gotten off work, as they were all wearing scrubs. They hung out at the bar for several hours, drinking, shooting pool, dancing, flirting with men. Wearing their scrubs. Yuck! Of course, after having a couple beers, myself, I was tempted to approach them and ask if they knew how gross and unhygienic that was, but I'm not a big person, and these women were all somewhat large and could have broken me like kindling, and luckily I hadn't had so much to drink that I was that foolish (my husband, of course, bet me $5 to say something to them).

All I could think of all night was fomites!

Specializes in LTAC, ICU, ER, Informatics.

I want to thank the people on this thread for inflating my previous slight germophobia into a full-blown OCD with the identification of all the nasty germs out in the community which will kill me long before anything I'm exposed to in the hospital. Expect your summons' in the mail soon to appear in my suit for loss of employability. You have caused me to go from a slightly hyper-vigilant nursing student who washes/gels hands constantly and changes out of work attire immediately after work into a rocking-in-the-corner drooling mess who can't go to my office job nor school for fear of: shaking hands, touching a shopping cart, touching a door handle, using a public restroom, handling my office phone, touching my keyboard (ack! how will I post on AN???), or having the off chance of someone breathing on me, or OMG sneezing?!?!?

ROFLMAO.

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"I don't really like to talk about my flair."

You've inspired a change in my signature....

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The bottom line here is.. there are organisms mutating ..in order to survive our best efforts to stop them.

That is why we see MRSA.. VRE.. and so on.

These organisms are smarter than we are!

I do not want any of these little buggers to come home with me.

Or spread them on my scrubs into the community!

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The bottom line here is.. there are organisms mutating ..in order to survive our best efforts to stop them.

That is why we see MRSA.. VRE.. and so on.

These organisms are smarter than we are!

I do not want any of these little buggers to come home with me.

Or spread them on my scrubs into the community!

I think the real bottom line is that these things ARE in the community, courtesy of people who don't follow isolation precautions when visiting iso patients in the hospital, patients who refuse to follow treatment for said infections and are free to roam wherever they want, IN THEIR STREET CLOTHES.

How many times are people in the hospital for a number of days BEFORE we find out they've got to be placed on iso precautions for MRSA, VRE, whatever? Everyone who has come to see them, everyone they live with, are also carrying those "little buggers" all OVER town.

At least when we know someone is infected, we wear gowns, gloves, universal precautions. Can't say the same for the rest of the public, which doesn't give a good gosh darn about protecting anyone else from the bugs they carry around knowingly.

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Specializes in volunteering!.

In my humble opinion, I agree that there is an "ick" factor. I am only a nursing student, but I recall hearing something about MRSA and other interesting microbes collecting around hospital settings. Let's not even discuss bodily fluids. When I get home, I remove clothes and shoes at the entry and carefully transport the offending garments to the laundry basket STAT, (TMI?). Then it's off to the shower for me.

As far as appearing professional, I am inclined to agree that certain professions do have an obligation to represent in a positive manner. In my view, medical professionals and law enforcement fall into this category. In fact, even athletes often have morality clauses in their contracts. Athletes. They are in the public view, and the big wigs that control the purse strings in the sports world understand the value of public opinion. Furthermore, I just read an article about how the public views nurses. According to Nurses.com, "Nurses maintained their dominance atop Gallup's annual poll on trustworthy professions, topping the list for the 12th time in the 13 years they have been included as an option (http://news.nurse.com/article/20111213/NATIONAL02/112190001/1003)." Wouldn't it be wonderful to keep that honor alive?

I will admit that there is a part of me that would be delighted to see hospital employees in scrubs behaving wildly at the bar, for very selfish reasons. You see, in my Googling of this topic, I came across some very interesting hospital policy material. I won't bore you with the lengthy list of relevant sites, but let's take a peek at Rule #2 under Uniforms and Safety Apparel on Montana State Hospital's Policy and Procedures document, which states, "Uniform clothing is not to be worn during off duty hours when an employee is engaged in other work, business or recreational activities (http://msh.mt.gov/volumei/humanresources/dresscodestandards.pdf)." From my brief research, it appears as if this is the norm. When I think of hoardes of nurses behaving wildly in uniform, all I can think is, "Job opening!?!!?!?!"

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Specializes in Med/surg, Quality & Risk.

But most of us don't have a contract. They will be all too happy to repeatedly tell you that your employment does not constitute a contract, when they're all too busy breaking all of the promises they made to you when you signed on, year after year after year. And as such, I don't feel that they dictate what I wear outside my place of employment. Maybe I'm wrong but I'd like to see a test case.

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Specializes in Peds Medical Floor.
I did not say lose your license, but your job. Lots of places now have issue with nurses representing their facility outside of work. It has nothing to do with germs, it has everything to do wih the image. It is being put in more employee handbooks than you can imagine. Right or wrong, it is happening. It is right up there with the facility determining a dress code, (no tattoos showing, what earrings one can wear, no heavy makeup, etc) they have added a clause about wearing of one's uniform outside of the hospital/nursing home. And if you live in a town small enough where someone is going to recognize you as a nurse from the local hospital/nursing home, it just takes a phone call to your manager that you were out "drinking" in uniform at a bar. (subjective information, to be sure).

I know you can't lose your license for that. I was just kidding because it always seems people are afraid of losing their licenses for silly things.

That last article you posted states in a couple places that there is no evidence that scrubs even pose a danger of causing infection.

I wouldn't mind wearing scrubs my employer provides and changing at work, as long as doctors, OT, PT, nurse's aides, dietary, volunteers, activities, visitors, and anyone else who comes in contact with patients have to change their clothes after leaving the building.

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Specializes in Peds Medical Floor.
In my humble opinion, I agree that there is an "ick" factor. I am only a nursing student, but I recall hearing something about MRSA and other interesting microbes collecting around hospital settings. Let's not even discuss bodily fluids. When I get home, I remove clothes and shoes at the entry and carefully transport the offending garments to the laundry basket STAT, (TMI?). Then it's off to the shower for me.

So you wear your scrubs home then? Well then you are getting the germs on your purse, jacket, and car seat. Then you pick them up on your street clothes when you wear your jacket or sit on your car seat. Then you put them on your couch or any chairs in your house. You also reinfect yourself when you do laundry.

Life is not sterile!!!! There are germs everywhere! It's part of life!!! I really don't understand people who are super germaphobic! You can't escape them.

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That last article you posted states in a couple places that there is no evidence that scrubs even pose a danger of causing infection.

Nurses have been going to and from duty in uniform for ages now and while there maybe and *ick* factor, no one has ever proven any sort of mass outbreak of disease as a result. Of course this would exclude serious diseases such as smallpox and so forth.

It is the whole "caps are dirty and spread disease" argument all over.

Even when nurses wore long skirts it was the dust that was kicked up in their wake, not the garments themselves as such which caused problems.

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Adding more petrol to the fire:

http://www.mdjunction.com/forums/lyme-disease-support-forums/medicine-treatments/3036026-hospital-uniforms-teeming-mrsa-germs-study-finds

And:

http://www.tsa-uk.org/uploads/PDF%20docs/TSA_white_paper_nurses_uniforms.pdf

Apparently UK nurses are the only ones in "Europe" that are allowed to wear their uniforms to and from duty, a fact which strikes some elsewhere with "horror".

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I'm sure it has been said....I wear scrubs to work but on some days have no patient contact and might be with charts all shift. I go to the grocery after work in my scrubs....am I germy?

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It is not the germy part that I am referring to. I have a boatload of kids, and they are all germy, all the time--

:coollook:

Just that at least in most employee handbooks (which one signs that they "agree" with every year) there is an entire section dedicated to image. One will not expose tattoos, one will not have nose/lip/etc peircings on display, one will not, shall not....you get the picture. And one of those "commandments" is thou shall not engage in extra-curricular activities whilst wearing scrubs. Whether one thinks it is right or wrong, a number of places have these rules.......

and not many nurses when admitting a patient would want one's introduction to be on the receiving end of "heyyyyyyy weren't you the girl I saw out at the bar last night doing some serious shots.......you ROCK dude......" ("Uhmmmm nooooo silly that was my friend! I was the one with the epic dance moves.......) :smokin: Unless one is admitting Johnny Depp or something.....KIDDING

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