OR nurses: wearing scrub machine scrubs home?

Editorial Team / Admin · Feb 25, 2018

No. That would result in being written up in my facility. The scrubs are facility property and per policy are not to be worn out of the building.

bugya90, ASN, BSN, LVN, RN · Feb 25, 2018

Let me preface this by saying I'm not a OR nurse and I have to buy my own scrubs.

Why would you want to put on dirty scrubs in the morning? I know some of the gross things that my scrubs get exposed to at work and can only imagine OR scrubs are worse. Why would you want to get ready for work and then put back on those dirty scrubs, get in your car and drive to work, just to change into clean scrubs? Couldn't you just throw on some jeans and a t-short instead of the dirty scrubs...

Axmann, RN, BSN, NREMT-B · Feb 25, 2018

What about wearing similar (or slightly different) color scrubs instead of street clothes to work? Work scrubs have a color-coded band on them so a plain set of Ciel blue scrubs without the band aren't interchangeable for our work scrubs (you would know if they were being worn in the OR or on the way home). Is that acceptable or would that be strange? Do people do that?

Editorial Team / Admin · Feb 25, 2018

The vast majority of my coworkers wear street clothes in and out. About the only ones who don't are myself (educator who floats over multiple sites, so I'd have to change multiple times a day if I wore the OR scrubs- I only change if I'm going to be in the OR) and our admin team who all wear business.

Axmann, RN, BSN, NREMT-B · Feb 25, 2018

Would I get made fun of for doing this?

vanilla bean · Feb 25, 2018

So many thoughts here... first, ewwwww, do NOT wear dirty scrubs back into the hospital. Besides being just plain yuck, it's an infection control issue. Second, if you only want to change once, wear *clean* street clothes or scrubs into work, change, and leave in your dirty scrubs at the end of your shift. Bring dirty hospital scrubs back to work with you for your next shift and swap out at scrubs machine for new properly laundered ones. Most people that wear hospital scrubs do just wear in street clothes and change before and after their shift. At my facility, you are not supposed to wear hospital issued scrubs home, but they are fairly lenient with this rule as long as you return them so that they are properly laundered. What they are *not* lenient about is taking a new set of scrubs home with you and wearing them into the hospital. If you need to wear their scrubs for your shift, you must change into them *in* the hospital (again, infection control issue).

That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Feb 25, 2018

Do you have something against wearing street clothes to work? When I worked Cath lab we would change into those scrubs first thing when I got to work, throw my regular clothes in the locker and be done with it. I usually just wore lay clothes to work since I would be changing anyways. There were those times though at 3am when we were called in that I would wear those home but would still wear street clothes the next day.