To cap or not to cap!

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I would love to hear feedback and/or opinions from other students on the whole nursing cap issue. I am graduating in May....Yeah! and there's a lot of controversy around the wearing of the nursing cap for pictures and pinning ceremony. In previous year's (including this one) a majority of students have voted to wear the cap and the nursing instructors have just said, if some of you wear them then all must wear them.

I fully support the students who want to wear the cap. I realize that it is personally meaningful to them. It's not to me and I feel it should be an individual decision. Everyone says that it would look weird if some wore it and some didn't. I don't agree. At our school the insturctors don't wear them and of course the male students don't. Just wondering how other students feel about this issue.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

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Personally, I think caps are way too precious and cutsey. Perhaps a compromise could be worked out. It's really the students' affair, not the instructors. (Instructors really have little input into the pinning ceremony at our school since it is paid for and organized by the students themselves -- although I'm sure instructors/administration would not participate if it was something inappropriate was planned)

Anyway, what if students who wanted caps were handed them with their pins or diplomas or whatever and then after the ceremony they could put the cap on for photos and also have it as a keepsake.

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Specializes in Tele.

I DO NOT want to wear the cap. I have so much hair that it will look like it's floating on my head. But I think my school makes all the girls wear it. I had clinicals today and I actually saw a nurse wearing one. I didn't think that the caps were worn anymore.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

i wish people would be more respectful of the tradition of caps. i understand if nurses today don't want to wear them. i know the downside of having to wear them on the job. and, as soon as we were able to ditch them at work, i gladly stopped wearing mine for very practical reasons. i graduated from nursing school in 1975. at that time, we all wore caps, including the nurses in the hospitals. it was required as part of the dress code. what many of you today probably don't know is that a nursing cap identified you and the nursing school or hospital that you came from. it identified you, much like your nursing pins do. we had those as well. it was easy to identify a "sister" from your school by the style of cap she wore or the number and/or color of stripes or emblems affixed to her cap. there was great pride in showing this off and discussing the school you trained at. i would consider them to be kind of like formal attire these days. you take them out of the closet, dust them off and wear them for very special occasions. wear them proudly because they are a symbol of your achievement and the public and your families recognize that.

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Specializes in Telemetry/Med Surg.

:yeahthat: I couldn't agree more.

We were capped at a ceremony during our freshman year. Each year afterwards, a stripe was added. The men received cadeucus. Although we don't wear the caps, we all considered it an honor and looked forward to receiving them.

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i wish people would be more respectful of the tradition of caps. i understand if nurses today don't want to wear them. i know the downside of having to wear them on the job. and, as soon as we were able to ditch them at work, i gladly stopped wearing mine for very practical reasons. i graduated from nursing school in 1975. at that time, we all wore caps, including the nurses in the hospitals. it was required as part of the dress code. what many of you today probably don't know is that a nursing cap identified you and the nursing school or hospital that you came from. it identified you, much like your nursing pins do. we had those as well. it was easy to identify a "sister" from your school by the style of cap she wore or the number and/or color of stripes or emblems affixed to her cap. there was great pride in showing this off and discussing the school you trained at. i would consider them to be kind of like formal attire these days. you take them out of the closet, dust them off and wear them for very special occasions. wear them proudly because they are a symbol of your achievement and the public and your families recognize that.

:yeahthat: although i've specialized in psych and have spent most of my career in street clothes, on the occasions when i do wear whites (including teaching med-surg clinical as a nursing instructor), i wear my cap.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

I got capped for my LPN in 1992 and then worked on a floor where caps were mandatory. I kinda thought they looked ridiculous and I hated it. When I got my ADN in 1994, those darn caps returned again. However, it wasn't mandatory that we wore them and believe me I didn't.

Having spent time in the US Navy - that's the only headgear I was proud to wear.

That said - it should be a personal choice. I don't want to wear a cap, so therefore I don't. However, for those that do - they too should have the choice.

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I would never wear that hat. It harkens back to the days when women were wearing aprons too. There is absolutely nothing professional about it. If you want to get sentimental about a piece of linen and cardboard on your head, then go to a photography studio afterwards and get your picture taken. All the hat does is push nursing back to the "handmaidens of the physician" days. Remember those good ol' days, when they didn't even have polio vaccine?

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Specializes in Nephrology.

I'm a 2nd semester student and that is one of the many things I am looking forward to at graduation. Not having grown up in the era of oppression of women, I do not have the same feelings fixated on the symbol of the cap. I do respect that era and the women who lived it but I don't feel I'm disrespecting them or supporting/ validating their hardships by wearing the cap. I think my grandmother would be proud :)

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Hey everyone!

Thanks for all the replies. It's funny, the replies are very much divided, just exactly like my class!

I really do support the desires of those graduates who want to wear the hat and I love the idea of those students having special photos taken seperately. I have not changed my opinion. The image for me does not represeent a modern, professional nurse.

Frankly, I would be much happier to wear my steth around my neck, much more meaningful to me! I just wish everyone could be allowed to have the choice. Oh well.... I guess by May I'll be so excited to be graduating that I probably wouldn't object to wearing whatever the heck they want.

Thanks again and hurry up spring!

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Specializes in Public Health, DEI.

I think that there is compromise to be found by having those who wish to wear the cap on the head do so and those who don't, to hold it in the photo like the symbol that it is... in reality, very very few nurses wear them on the job anymore. I know someone already suggested this- I'm not stealing the suggestion, just agreeing with it!

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