when did they stop wearing those cute nurses caps?

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those used to be really cute. when did they stop making those a requirement?

Specializes in ICU, Education, Peri-op.

I would guess about the time that men started to become nurses.

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Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care, Cardiac, EMS.
I would guess about the time that men started to become nurses.

Would that be in the 1300's with the Order of Saint Benedict and the Alexian Brothers?

Or 1783 and James Derham, a freed slave who was arguably the first African-American male nurse, (and then subsequently went on to become a doctor)?

Men have been nurses throughout history. It isn't a recent phenomenon.

Oh, and sorry for the threadjack.

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Specializes in Women's health & post-partum.

I quit wearing mine in the "70s when I worked OB and we used the old-fashioned fetoscopes. You had to take off your cap to use it. We would conveniently "forget" to put the cap back on. Mine now resides in the bottom of a drawer. I think I've mislaid the velvet ribbon.

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I worked a LTC facility in the early 90's. The cap was a required part of the nurses uniform at that facility and at many others that my friends worked at. I think I stopped working in the facility in 93 or so, and they were wearing them then.

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Thank God we no longer have to.:bowingpur

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Specializes in Cardiac, ER.

I still have mine,....I worked hard for it and am proud to have it,...but I wouldn't want to have to wear it everyday. Not real practical.

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Specializes in EMT-P.
those used to be really cute. when did they stop making those a requirement?

When this image was circulated. :)

01020676.detail.a.jpg

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Pain, End of Life Care.

i think men entering the field to be more than just orderlies had something to do with it too. Altho, right now my LTC center has mandated that I wear bright pink top and grey pants for my uniform...hahahaha. Makes me chuckle everytime i wear it.

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Though mostly absent from today's modern hospital dress codes for nurses as a requirement, there are clinical settings in the United States and elsewhere in the world where caps are still worn. Indeed there are some nursing programs in the United States that still have their female students in classic uniforms along with caps.

Just because a hospital's dress code does not mandate caps, that does not mean a nurse cannot wear one, if she chooses. Long as there are no restrictions on head coverings, and patient safety isn't a concern, don't see the problem. Though some modern DONs (or vice-president, chief nursing officer as they are now called), might not be thrilled.

By the early 1980's many hospitals and other clinical settings began to relax or do away with having caps as required part of one's uniform. Places I worked things ran the gamut, some nurses wore them, others didn't, others reported for duty with the best intentions of keeping the thing on, but as the shift wore on it ended up in a drawer or somewhere in the nurse's station.

You youngsters have to understand that even as late as the 1980's and 1980's not all hospitals had AC. Can you imagine sweating through a NYC summer running around for eight or more hours with that darn thing plastered to your head?

Caps are simply impractical with today's nursing practice. Patients are hooked up to all manner and sort of equipment, much of it with wires and or tubing. Dodging IV bottles and lines, and various orthopaedic equipment was bad enough.

Leave us not forget the main origin of nurse's caps, maid's uniforms.

Yes, nursing sisters wore head gear, and not because of keeping their hair clean and or fear of spreading germs (religious orders were running hospitals/providing care for the sick for hundreds of years before the work of Pasteur, Lister and others proved illness was caused by unseen "germs"). Rather it was because as professed virgins their heads had to be covered at all times. Orders then and some probably still do today have "night caps" worn when sleeping,and even the orders that wore huge coifs, normally had another simpler one, or perhaps a veil for indoors or some such.

Good old Florence Nightingale introduced the cap to nursing schools/nurses, by way of the fact all women in Victorian England (and much of the Western world), at that time wore some sort of cap, both indoors and out. Here yes, such caps protected a woman's hair from soot, dust, dirt and helped deal with lice and other common vermin.

As times and fashions changed, young women/girls stopped wearing caps, and soon the fashion died out all together, except for maids, waitresses and other domestic staff, and that included nurses. Even maids began to rebel against wearing caps as they felt it was a badge of domestic work, and when the servant problem became acute, many employers felt it was better to have a maid without a cap, than risk not having one at all, so they gave in.

Of course in nursing the cap was elevated into a symbol of the profession, and began to separate a "trained" nurse from just any char woman setting herself up to offer nursing service.

Many schools then and today controlled just whom got their hands on their caps, and the wearing of the object along with various stripes and such followed a strict code of rules.

Couple of things helped push caps out the door. One, younger women unlike their mothers weren't used to wearing hats (hence the famous line from the musical "Company","does anyone still wear a hat?"), and certainly not indoors.

Unless one had lots of thick hair or wore "big hair", getting the darn thing on and keeping it in place for several hours was a PITA. Can you imagine today with all a woman has to do just to get herself to work on time, rolling into the hospital, perhaps grabbing muffin and or coffee and barely making report on time, now having to stop and spend several minutes trying to secure a cap to your head? *LOL*

Contrary to popular belief, many times nurses only had their caps on when the head nurse was on duty, and or a supervisor, the DON was about. Walk into any nurse's locker room back in the day and you would find caps on top of lockers, under lockers, behind lockers. If word got out someone important was heading towards your floor/unit, you grabbed the thing and plopped in on your head. When they were gone, off it came.

Find it rather interesting that the only places one finds nurses still required to wear caps (Asia, Mexico, Central and South America, etc), are places with very strong views as to a woman's role in society.

Finally, yes male nurses had an impact on caps, but not in the way many think. Most state and IIRC federal law prevents uniforms based upon gender except in extreme instances. Remember not to long ago female police officers,meter maids, and other jobs formerly reserve of males gave women uniforms with skirts/dresses, and forbade them to wear pants. Heck there was a time females couldn't wear pants to college or even the workplace.

Well as you can imagine some women got tired of such nonsense, sued and won. So just as today you see female police officers wearing pants, you cannot restrict caps to female nursing staff only. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. While the above posted picture was meant to be a joke, here in New York City, several boys recently have won the right to wear skirts/dresses to school. It will only be a matter of time before a "male nurse" decides he wants to either make a statement or tick someone off. Either way be careful what you wish for.....

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I live in the Philippines and the only "nurses" wearing caps here are students doing clinicals; the licensed RNs don't wear them anymore.

It is nice, however, to see nurses in uniform. I feel that nursing in the USA has gotten a bit too casual with the outfits (Disney characters... really?).

I think there could be a decent compromise between "traditional" and modern to find something that was clearly a uniform which commands respect and at the same time is comfortable and relatively easy to clean.

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Specializes in CTICU.
those used to be really cute. when did they stop making those a requirement?

Exhibit A - The insulting, patronising "cute"..... one reason why we don't wear them anymore.

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They don't go with my 5 o'clock shadow (that's AM, btw)

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