Stripes

Nurses General Nursing

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I know this may be a dumb question, but I am curious. I was watching that show Emergency, the other day, and the nurses still had hats. Some nurses had one black stripe on their hats and some had two,and some had none, and I remember being a little kid and in the hospital and some nurses hats had blue stripes across. So my question is do the stripes have some significance? Thanks!

I understood that the black stripe indicated an RN and that two parallel green hash mark stripes indicated LPN. I know no one else likes them but I would have loved to wear a cap when I worked the floor so that patients would not be confused about who was walking in the door.

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:scrying:

We never even got caps (graduated in 1997).

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Specializes in Telemetry, Case Management.

Stripes and their placement denote the school you attended. I graduated from a school where we wore a small cap with a single royal blue stripe. My first job was in a neighboring town that had their own school and all the other nurses, every single one had attended that school. They required us to wear our caps and the DON accosted me my second day there and told me I was NOT a nurse, because my stripes didn't look like everyone else's!! She was unaware that every school's cap didn't look like everyone else's!

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Originally posted by KaroSnowQueen

Stripes and their placement denote the school you attended. I graduated from a school where we wore a small cap with a single royal blue stripe. My first job was in a neighboring town that had their own school and all the other nurses, every single one had attended that school. They required us to wear our caps and the DON accosted me my second day there and told me I was NOT a nurse, because my stripes didn't look like everyone else's!! She was unaware that every school's cap didn't look like everyone else's!

These folks really didn't get around much!! Sad to say it many of us still live in an insulated shell. She must not have ever read a journal or looked close at her text books in school. photos.:chuckle :rolleyes: :kiss

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Per my grandmother, who graduated from a diploma school in Ontario in 1939, graduate nurses wear white caps with a single black velvet band across the top. The style of cap (width of brim, one button or two, peaked or not, etc.) varied according to the hospital, but graduate nurses had a single black band and anything else meant that the person was either a student or an LPN. The school you attended was indicated by the pin, worn on either the dress or the cap.

She didn't say anything about the black velvet band indicating mourning for Florence Nightengale, but it makes sense, since Nightengale was the first to propose formal (school) training for nurses and the creation of nursing as a profession. I plan to wear my grandmother's cap and school pin if and when I graduate; she wore HER mother's cap and school pin at her graduation.

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Specializes in OB.

I always thought male nursing students should have to wear an equally silly looking hat of some sort - maybe a beanie? Thought it was unfair that they didn't have to cope with this!

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What I really want(and never got the oppurtunity to get) is one of those big,navy-blue capes that nurses used to wear over thier white uniforms. I thought those looked so cool!

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At my diploma nursing school (I graduated in 1974) we had our capping ceremony after successfully finishing our first term of school. The cap was plain white. For our junior year we had a thin black stripe, for our senior year we had a thick black stripe. We also had a less formal ceremony for this called "black banding". When we graduated we were back to the plain white cap.

Although I'm happy to not have to wear a cap these days, I do kind of miss the recognition and respect that went along with it. Don't you find it interesting that most all nurse stuff depicts a cap-wearing nurse (little bears on scrubs, those cut little nurse pins you hang your badge on, little statues, the little cat nurse above this post.....) when almost no nurse wears a cap these days?

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That is an interesting point, Rainbow Sky. I don't really miss my cap, but it was so much easier for the pts to find us, and know who the nurses were. I wear navy-blue scrubs, and I have had several pts ask me if I was in housekeeping.

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Graduated in 88. My poor cap resides very smashed in a box in another box of mementos.

Our cap was white, with a narrow light blue and white stripe for the LPN, and black stripes for the RN. I think we just bought our caps that way in the bookstore, and BEWARE if a single hair escaped that hat!!!

I only wore it in school, I never had to wear it in a job.

Poor cap.

M

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I graduated from Nursing School in 1977. We still wore caps and the capping ceremony was a BIG event (By the way we had 2 male students in our class).

We received a diagonal narrow black velvet stripe across the right corner of the cap for every year we finished (1 stripe for a Sophomore, 2 stripes for a Junior and 3 for a Senior).

When we graduated, our school cap had the narrow black velvet stripe across the top of the cap about 1/2 inch below the edge.

Again, this was a BIG DEAL! It showed recognition and was much anticipated ... a source of respect and pride.

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Specializes in ICU, nutrition.

Thanks for posting the interesting link, Youda.

No caps here, and none of the schools I'm aware of around here do caps anymore. I remember back in the mid-90s I was working at a hospital in Arkansas and the LPN students wore caps, but I didn't notice what they looked like. I was just marveling that anyone wore caps anymore (this was before I was a nurse, but I'd heard all about them from my mom.)

My mom said the happiest day of her professional career was the day she didn't have to wear that stinkin' cap anymore.

When we graduated last year, a couple of my friends and I bought caps (all we could find was solid white, I guess we would have had to have sewn on our stripes) and wore them for our graduation pictures in our uniforms. They looked really cute, but I can't imagine having to move patients, bend over, etc. with that thing perched on my head.

My mom sure liked that picture though. :)

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