Imagine a hospital in which all nurses and doctors exhibit professionalism, beauty, splendor, and awe among colleagues and patients. A place where the people taking care of you appear greater than human, larger than life, infallible figures, portraying an image that captures total trust and total confidence from those nearby. What a wonderful place that would be. But alas, we have work ahead of us.
This thread is designed to discuss the importance of impressions in nursing. While many nurses take pride in appearing beautiful or handsome, many walk in to work with a case of the feck-its when it comes to appearance. Unfortunately I feel that nurses are much worse than doctors in this arena. Where I work the majority of female doctors wear their hair down, liberally apply makeup, wear form fitting clothing, and hard soled shoes. They try to appear as beautiful as they can. Likewise, the male doctors come in with tailored clothing that had been ironed, they have well-oiled hair, nice watches, and other things reminiscent of the show "General Hospital."
Meanwhile, in the ICU I've worked in, we've got a female nurse with a buzz cut, one woman wearing a pirate-like black eye patch, nurses with baggy wrinkled scrubs, nurses wearing those ugly skechers shapeups, everyone wearing their hair up or back in a plain boring pony tail instead of letting it flow, men or even women with untrimmed or unneatly trimmed facial hair and people exhibiting other drab or and in my humble opinion, embarrassing features. I feel like no other college educated profession dresses down as much as nurses do and it bothers me.
What do you think of nurses and the images they portray in the professional setting? Use this thread to talk about what you like or dislike, what you think should change and what shouldn't.
Specializes in Family Medicine, Tele/Cardiac, Camp.
And with this, you have earned my respect, young nursling :) Well done. You are going to be a great nurse.
I just squee-ed a little bit at the term "nursling". I know it was probably originally unintentional, but it's so darn cute. A young little nurse. Nursling. I love it. :)
Dress code requires us to wear our hair up and off shoulders. Nothing is worse than hair touching patients. Well-oiled hair? Well, we do have a male doctor that spikes his hair and I am 99% sure he is wearing eyeliner. Spike like gel ran through it not spiked like a mohawk spike.
Nice watches harbor germs. No one should be wearing watches. Maybe a stethoscope watch. No one should be wearing rings either.
I'll pass on the makeup. Nothing worse than sweating while doing compressions and getting makeup in your eyes. It burns. True story.
I currently am torn between my Alegria soft clogs and my Danskos. I wear bright colors. Alegria is so soft but Danskos can withstand getting blood, ****, and piss on them. I can wipe them off with a clean cloth.
Why is one wearing an eyepatch? Does she not have an eye? If I didn't have an eye, I'd exercise my right to wear an eyepatch too.
Specializes in ED, Telemetry,Hospice, ICU, Supervisor.
It is important to respects everyone. The facial hair may be due to Religious standards. Females can also wear a "buzzcut", as is socially acceptable in modern times.
Men with well oiled hair give me the creeps and women should not have hair hanging down so that it gets in the way. I don't know how applying makeup liberally LOL is going to make me look more professional than I do now!
Aren't you the same person who kept going on about how a patient dying wasn't therapeutic for you, and that it was annoying that he had to be suctioned so often (but don't worry you ended up letting him die because you didn't have time for it). Maybe less time looking at how formfitting the nurses clothing is and more time getting to your patient care would be the best idea yet!
:rolleyes:
cracklingkraken, ASN, RN
1,855 Posts
Why can't you let this thread die peacefully?
The inhumanity! I cringe each time I see this thread pop up.