I currently work in med/surg (although I will be moving to the ED in a week ). The hospital I work at has a committee looking into requiring their med/surg RNs to wear "uniforms". Essentially they will tell us what color scrubs to wear, but we will be required to buy and launder our own scrubs, so my thinking is it's really a dress code and not a uniform. Their reasoning for doing this is the claim that MDs can't tell between the RNs and the Techs and the RNs don't look "professional" enough.
Personally I think it's a terrible idea, as do many of the other RNs and techs, but we're pretty much being over ruled by a handful of older RNs and bigwigs. If a MD wants to know if I am an RN they are free to ask me at any time. Additionally, while they have said they will not provide us with scrubs, nor will they give us an allowance to buy them, the currently provide our L&D and OR RNs with scrubs which seems kind of unfair.
So my questions are;
1) Does your hospital require a uniform or dress code and if so, what color, type, etc
Would have to look it up, but am almost certain that via federal, state and other laws/rules/court decisions, uniforms cannot be gender specfic under most circumstances. That is one could not require dresses for female nurses only, and restrict male nurses to pants. IIRC, this was also one of the ways many nurses stopped hospitals from forcing female nurses to wear caps, but not male nurses. Considering the current debate going on in some areas of the United States about boys being allowed to wear dresses to school (don't ask), highly doubt any hospital is going to go down that road anytime soon.
Also as far as the OR is concerned, the AORN long ago took the position that scrub tops and pants were preferred over dresses. Apparently this is due to the amount of shed skin cells and other "things" that become airborne from under a nurse's skirts as she moved about. The mind reels as to how the AORN applied science to measure this, but there you are.
As for white uniforms becoming dingy and grey over time, that is a load of flannel. Good quality white clothing of any variety stays white, bright and gleaming with proper laundering practices. Proof of this can be found on eBay, thrift shops and other places selling vintage clothing. As such places one can find nursing uniforms from the 1940's through the 1980's that were worn, and still are gleaming white.
What has changed, aside from poor laundry habits, is the quality of nursing uniforms.
Up until rather recently one could walk into any uniform store or go through a catalog and find tons of high quality white uniforms (dresses, pant-suits, tops, pants, the lot), that were not only made in the USA, but made to give service. Today much is imported from China or someplace else, and is of rather poor quality. The percentage of polyester is higher in cotton/poly blends, and the cotton part is often not of the top grades.
Getting back to patient recognition of nurses, study after study almost always arrives at the same conclusion. Patients prefer and easily understand who is a "nurse" when nursing staff wears whites. Throw a cap on and you've got near 100% visability as far as patients are concerned, especially older persons.
Have not always been sold on name tags alone as ID of who is what. Many persons such as myself wear glasses or contact lenses and cannot see more than a foot in front of them clearly without either. Therefore someone wearing a name tag isn't much good to us unless the object is close enough for me to read. That and one is in the right mental and physical state to "see", and comprehend in the first place.
Will they make us go back to DRESSES? !!! HAHA. polished shoes.
I often wear a skirt to work and I am 24 and work a a colo-rectral hepato-billary ward. But I am in Australia where a lot of female nurses wear skirts out of choice. Also in other jobs such as supermarket staff or Kmart a LOT of women choose to wear a skirt...................don't think I am comparing nurses to supermarket cashiers but simply remarking on a cultural different to the US and Ireland for that matter. As for the polished shoes thing...........yeah polished shoes how can you claim to be a professional if you have shoes that look like a 10 year old boy has been cycling a bike with them on? all scuffed and dingy do not exactly add to the professional look.
Since my hospital is probably going to switch to a specific color for nursing uniforms I am interested in this topic. I have looked for research studies that prove that same color uniforms allow for patients to more easily identify their nurse. I have not found any. Most of the articles I have found were from the 80s. It seems that nursing management has a tendency to go full circle and repeat past mistakes. We are actually staffed at my hospital right now so I think that management is trying to "pull in the reins." I agree with this being a power issue.
As for the white shoes/clothing issues. Some areas of the country have hard water and high levels of minerals in their washing water. This makes the whites dingy. Black/brown professional danskos look just as professional as white shoes. I think they look better because they don't show scuffs.
Since my hospital is probably going to switch to a specific color for nursing uniforms I am interested in this topic. I have looked for research studies that prove that same color uniforms allow for patients to more easily identify their nurse. I have not found any. Most of the articles I have found were from the 80s. It seems that nursing management has a tendency to go full circle and repeat past mistakes. We are actually staffed at my hospital right now so I think that management is trying to "pull in the reins." I agree with this being a power issue.
As for the white shoes/clothing issues. Some areas of the country have hard water and high levels of minerals in their washing water. This makes the whites dingy. Black/brown professional danskos look just as professional as white shoes. I think they look better because they don't show scuffs.
You probably aren't going to find much in the way of national (USA) studies on the matter, but as with much else regarding nursing, the activity has been on a local hospital level.
IIRC, the Mayo Clinic has a book or some such out about how they arrived at what "uniform" nurses and other patient care staff should wear (think they decided on whites for nurses), and if you "Google" carefully you'll find other hospital's announcments on dress codes for nursing staff. I say carefully because one has to weed through tons of links to nursing uniform store sites.
Basically hospital research echos much of what has been stated already; the powers that be decided that too many persons are running in and out of patient's rooms, and all look alike. This has lead to patients, their familes, and other staff members having a hard time telling who is a "nurse". There is also the feeling (again from the powers that be, and perhaps patients/their familes), that things have gotten just a little too casual, and it is time to tighten things up a bit.
Funny story not related to your quote:
Walking home several months ago ran into a woman wearing navy blue scrubs with "Hospital for Special Surgery", stitched on the top. As we were going the same way we struck up an conversation about health care and before parting ways asked if her employer was hiring nurses as one knew of several looking. Her response? "I don't know, I work in medical records"! *LOL*
Ok, am the first to admit this is none of my business, but what is the reason for supplying scrubs, much less allowing them to be worn by persons not remotely involved with patient care? I mean ward clerks, medical records, etc.. Back when nurses wore whites as standard issue, ward clerks and everyone else not involved in patient care wore street clothing.
Oh, we we ALL wear scrubs.. janitors in teal, RT in caribean, etc...so people still don't know who is who. I agree with taking everyone but patient care workers out of scrubs. We need to be able to move around!
We're colour coded by job. RNs- royal blue, techs-tan, resp- green, etc...it is the same for all the floors (although it may be different for OR...I hardly ever see them.)
I don't think it helps the patients, but I agree with other posters that it helps me. Heck, I ID myself to the pts as an RN, and some of them still don't get it. But in a large hospital where it takes a while to learn people's faces, I like knowing who is doing what.
We buy our own, and I'm very ok with that. I buy scrubs that fit me, without being to short or falling off, and in that new soft material that feels so good (Grey's Anatomy scrubs). I don't mind, because I don't know anybody else who has a job where they're supplied clothes for work. Just seems like a weird concept to me. (Besides, what other profession that makes in the range that nurses do gets away with wearing a $20-$40 outfit to work? Even a pair of Dockers and a decent polo shirt is gonna run around $75-$100). And yeah, we wash our own. Been doing my own laundry my entire adult life, can't imagine letting anyone else do it.
In the ER where I volunteered, nurses were the only ones without a uniform. Techs, radiology, x-ray, janitors, transporters, and secretaries had uniforms, but nurses could wear whatever they wanted.
I don't have a problem with a nursing uniform, as long as it isn't white and doesn't involve hats. White is very hard to keep clean, and I don't do hats.
I've heard a couple rumors that this could happen at my facility, and personally, I'm not against it since I'm not one to wear many printed scrubs. However, I am terrified of the thought of being forced to wear white scrubs (which I hear is a possibility.) One because I am short and the bottoms of my pants hang low and will stain. I live in Pennsylvania where we have lots of snow and sludge. Even if I were to wear jeans and change when I get to work, the only bathroom we are allowed to change clothes in is about the size of a cubicle. And second because ever since my son was born I have a weird armpit sweating problem. I don't stink more, but I leave stains in the armpits of my shirts. Not noticeable since I wear dark colors, but I've discovered that every white shirt I own is now unwearable due to yellow armpits. (EW!!) I can't imagine dealing with white scrub tops. So if my facility starts this please god let it be dark colors.
RNs will be the only ones forced into a dress code. Techs, RTs, secretaries, transporters, etc will all be able to wear whatever scrubs they want. Yes, they all wear scrubs.
No I do not expect the hospital to do my chores Lots of business that supply uniforms keep and launder them. It's common. There are whole businesses out there just for the purpose of supplying and laundering uniforms.
I don't expect my hospital to pay for my scrubs or even give me an allowance for them, I just think it would be nice. I can't see them telling all the RNs to go out and by new scrubs when they've held our raises and then hired new grads at a higher rate than experienced RNs, changed our insurance so we pay more and get less services, and forced shifts to work short as a real morale booster lol
Personally I don't wear anything but solid color scrubs but some do wear cartoons and prints. I don't think it looks any more or less professional. Also, you can put anyone in the nicest, cleanest, greatest looking scrubs of any color and if their attitude is unprofessional they will look it. Likewise, if an RN has Strawberry Shortcake on her top but walks into her patient's room with a professional, caring, competent attitude no one is going to care what color her scrubs are.
). The hospital I work at has a committee looking into requiring their med/surg RNs to wear "uniforms". Essentially they will tell us what color scrubs to wear, but we will be required to buy and launder our own scrubs, so my thinking is it's really a dress code and not a uniform. Their reasoning for doing this is the claim that MDs can't tell between the RNs and the Techs and the RNs don't look "professional" enough. 
Also in other jobs such as supermarket staff or Kmart a LOT of women choose to wear a skirt...................don't think I am comparing nurses to supermarket cashiers but simply remarking on a cultural different to the US and Ireland for that matter. As for the polished shoes thing...........yeah polished shoes how can you claim to be a professional if you have shoes that look like a 10 year old boy has been cycling a bike with them on? all scuffed and dingy do not exactly add to the professional look.
Lots of business that supply uniforms keep and launder them. It's common. There are whole businesses out there just for the purpose of supplying and laundering uniforms.
DoGoodThenGo
4,133 Posts
Would have to look it up, but am almost certain that via federal, state and other laws/rules/court decisions, uniforms cannot be gender specfic under most circumstances. That is one could not require dresses for female nurses only, and restrict male nurses to pants. IIRC, this was also one of the ways many nurses stopped hospitals from forcing female nurses to wear caps, but not male nurses. Considering the current debate going on in some areas of the United States about boys being allowed to wear dresses to school (don't ask), highly doubt any hospital is going to go down that road anytime soon.
Also as far as the OR is concerned, the AORN long ago took the position that scrub tops and pants were preferred over dresses. Apparently this is due to the amount of shed skin cells and other "things" that become airborne from under a nurse's skirts as she moved about. The mind reels as to how the AORN applied science to measure this, but there you are.
As for white uniforms becoming dingy and grey over time, that is a load of flannel. Good quality white clothing of any variety stays white, bright and gleaming with proper laundering practices. Proof of this can be found on eBay, thrift shops and other places selling vintage clothing. As such places one can find nursing uniforms from the 1940's through the 1980's that were worn, and still are gleaming white.
What has changed, aside from poor laundry habits, is the quality of nursing uniforms.
Up until rather recently one could walk into any uniform store or go through a catalog and find tons of high quality white uniforms (dresses, pant-suits, tops, pants, the lot), that were not only made in the USA, but made to give service. Today much is imported from China or someplace else, and is of rather poor quality. The percentage of polyester is higher in cotton/poly blends, and the cotton part is often not of the top grades.
Getting back to patient recognition of nurses, study after study almost always arrives at the same conclusion. Patients prefer and easily understand who is a "nurse" when nursing staff wears whites. Throw a cap on and you've got near 100% visability as far as patients are concerned, especially older persons.
Have not always been sold on name tags alone as ID of who is what. Many persons such as myself wear glasses or contact lenses and cannot see more than a foot in front of them clearly without either. Therefore someone wearing a name tag isn't much good to us unless the object is close enough for me to read. That and one is in the right mental and physical state to "see", and comprehend in the first place.