Do u feel RNs should be only nurse to wear certain colored uniforms?

Nurses General Nursing

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  1. Do you feel RNs and LVNs should wear different colored uniforms?

    • 13
      No, they should be the same
    • 6
      Yes, but RNs & LVN/LPNs be different than rest of staff
    • 0
      Yes, RNs should wear all white
    • 4
      RNs & LVN/LPNs should wear all white, other staff with colored uniforms

23 members have participated

In hosp. where I used to work, RNs wore navy and white uniforms and LVNs wore any other colored uniforms. The same as CNA and other hosp. staff! I hated it. I feel that RNs and LVN/LPNs should wear a certain color or be distinquished in some way from other staff. I don't feel it should be RNs only. I went to school and worked hard also,

I think all nurses should work naked....with, perhaps, our names and titles written on a piece of tape (paper preferred) which would be adhered to our chests, breasts, (or other various body parts for variation.):p

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:D LMAO LMAO AT LOIS JEAN'S REPLY
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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

Lois Jean:

I don't want to make them sicker!!:eek:

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I think that nurses were respected more in white uniforms. When people say that the uniform seems cold and distant, it isn't really the uniform that is cold and distant - it's the lack of the smile on the person wearing the uniform.

Vision the line up of firefighters at the services of their brothers and sisters at the 911 memorial services - the men and women lined up in their uniforms - tell me, would the effect be the same if the firefighters and police came in their jeans and sweatshirts, or even in different suits. The power in the pictures was in the unity of the uniform signifying brotherhood. Not just anyone can wear their uniform any more than just anyone can wear a nurse's uniform.

It would be interesting to see if a nurse wore a traditional uniform for just one week if she would notice any difference in the way she was treated.

You pick, you pay. What if they decided they would pay and you had to wear a bubble suit......

:roll

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Specializes in Obstetrics, M/S, Psych.

Individualism is important to me. I surely don't believe it allienates me from my nurse peers. If my patients can't tell I am a nurse by the way I competently deliver their care, I must not be doing my job well enough. No uniform defines me as a nurse, but my experience, knowlege and skills should be a dead giveaway.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

I think if I were forced to go back to whites, I'd quit nursing! Had to wear 'em in school, and if you like your nurse to look like an appropriate mate for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, then I'm your girl........damned things made me look 30# heavier than I really was. I also don't do solid colors because I'm rather well-endowed on top and EVERYTHING I eat ends up on the front of my shirt somehow.......so it's prints, prints, and more prints for this RN!:D

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Specializes in Obstetrics, M/S, Psych.
Originally posted by mjlrn97

I think if I were forced to go back to whites, I'd quit nursing! Had to wear 'em in school, and if you like your nurse to look like an appropriate mate for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, then I'm your girl........damned things made me look 30# heavier than I really was. I also don't do solid colors because I'm rather well-endowed on top and EVERYTHING I eat ends up on the front of my shirt somehow.......so it's prints, prints, and more prints for this RN!:D

While still seeing the humor in it, you describe how totally impractical whites are! It kills me how those who won't be wearing them, while toiling in human goo, make the rules of what nurses shall wear!!

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Specializes in MSICU and CCU.
Originally posted by sbic56

It kills me how those who won't be wearing them, while toiling in human goo, make the rules of what nurses shall wear!!

LOL. Agreed. I wear mostly solids with the occcasional low-key print. I refuse to wear white. I am a spiller. I am a spiller of food and a spiller of liquid meds. Liquid Colace has some bizzare magnetic attraction to my chest.

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Originally posted by NRSKarenRN

We've given up our seperate identy by doing away with all white. We wore white for over 70 years, before central air, automatic washing machines and permanent press. INDIVIDUALISM is the cause of why we aren't together as a profession.

I'll have to respectfully disagree here. Granted I've only been a nurse for 5 years and I'm in my 40's, but from what I've read of the history of nursing, it was the idea that nurses were little white-capped robots who did the bidding of the docs and stood when they came into the nursing station and presented themselves as a monolith is how the nursing profession image kept nurses in their place, so to speak, for so long. I don't think nurses should have a "separate identity" as nurses in a group doing "group-think". I think we should have separate identities as individual people.

To me, presenting myself as a professional means I choose what I want to wear within reason. (No heaving breasts bursting from the top of v-necked tops, no crop tops and low-rider pants, etc).:D

This isn't McDonald's afterall, where you are forced to wear the Golden Arches. We are professional nurses.

I think individualism is what is going to save the nursing profession.

I'm not sure why it is so hard to identify yourself as a nurse to your patient and think that is a non-issue. Or why it is a bad thing to have to ask if someone is a nurse? When you walk into a bank are you always sure who the tellers are vs the bank manager vs the loan officer? Should we tell them that since we can't figure out who is who, the managers needs to wear a different color outfit from the tellers and from the loan officers?

I don't like prints. My co-workers love them. To each their own.

steph

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Specializes in Obstetrics, M/S, Psych.

Well said, steph!

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Great post, steph!:kiss

Last night a little girl, the daughter of one of my patients, asked me if I liked being a doctor. Mind you, I was wearing a print scrub top with an autumn-leaf motif, and brown scrub pants! Of course, I corrected her and told her I was a nurse, not a doctor, and let me tell you, the look of disappointment that crossed her little face was a sad sight. But it didn't last long, because I also told her I loved being a nurse and couldn't imagine even wanting to be a doctor, because I liked taking care of people like her dad.

Well, that kid brightened right up, and she followed me around the rest of the shift to see what I was doing. She wanted to see my ID badge and my kids' pictures; she watched me hang her dad's antibiotic and peppered me with questions about what the medicine was supposed to do; she even asked if the LPN I was working with was my daughter. (Well, she's young enough to be.....) And when I left for the evening, she waved to me as though I were a family friend, which, I guess, I was for that short time.

So yes, the public may have a few problems identifying us, but I think how we feel about ourselves and our careers speaks far louder than white uniforms ever could. :)

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I have always preferred them and will continue to wear them. I have patients who comment on my uniform and professional appearance all the time, even at the end of the shift when I look like I have been through WWIII. But, at the same time, I have friends who wear scrubs of all colors and prints and they claim that patients comment on their appearance as well. So, I say each to his/her own and I am old so there you have it!

Barbara

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