When Did Your Hospital Stop Requiring Caps?

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Hi Everyone,

I have been surfing through various articles and came to realize that my hospital here in Illinois may have been fairly unique...

I was required to wear a cap until 1987 and we did not change over to scrubs until 1989 or so.

I thought it was the norm since several of my friends who worked at various hospitals around the area wore caps as well.

So my question is.... On what year were you allowed to toss out the cap, also the white uniform in general? Was Illinois unique?

I sure miss it, sometimes I feel like a circus act in the scrubs.

Thanks,

Judy

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Our dress code stopped requiring caps in 1979.

All white in 1982.

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

Everyone just sort of stopped wearing them ~ 1970 to the best of my recollection. I don't think there was ever any "pronouncement" from nsg admin.

I think we had hospital provided scrubs til 1990. Then it became, "we'll give you 5 sets, you wash", next, you pay us, we'll sell you what we'll allow you to wear. (:angryfire ). @ that stage, I started buying my own because they didn't have my size, and I knew where Omar the scrub maker lived. It only took a year or 2 more for it to be a free for all.

We still needed to get OR scrubs to take a baby to OR, but I even bought my own of those. Couldn't take a chance they wouldn't have my size on a day I needed them.

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Specializes in 5 years peds, 35 years med-surg.

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I agree. I worked hard for my cap and felt so professional in my white uniform. Now if a pt sees me they wonder if I'm housekeeping, dietary, or some other dept. My name and title are right on the whiteboard by their bed but they still don't know. The "youngsters" in nursing are the ones who changed it by refusing to wear caps because it :messed my hair up" or "got caught in the curtains." It became optional sometime in the 90's then started fading out. Now the nuses wear baggy hiphugger pants and short tops so you see their belly buttons and thong panties. No one says a thing about it either. Yes, I am an old bag....lol.

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I started nursing school in '86 and we wore caps for the first semester. None of the hospitals required them of their staff. We talked admin into getting rid of the caps and I've never seen one worn since. Scrubs: I graduated in '88 and the hospital I worked for provided blue scrubs for OR, ER, and ICU. All other units wore white. A few years later some of us started buying our own printed scrubs and the dress code was changed. Critical care has to wear scrubs, floors can wear scrubs or whites.

Sidenote: my brother and I have both spent time in army hospitals as kids and I do not recall ever seeing an army nurse in a cap.

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Specializes in Telemetry, OR, ICU.
I started nursing school in '86 and we wore caps for the first semester. None of the hospitals required them of their staff. We talked admin into getting rid of the caps and I've never seen one worn since. Scrubs: I graduated in '88 and the hospital I worked for provided blue scrubs for OR, ER, and ICU. All other units wore white. A few years later some of us started buying our own printed scrubs and the dress code was changed. Critical care has to wear scrubs, floors can wear scrubs or whites.

Sidenote: my brother and I have both spent time in army hospitals as kids and I do not recall ever seeing an army nurse in a cap.

Not a male Army Nurse... for sure! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

BTW, this talk of wearing all whites & the white nurse cap is a :nono:

Why? Nursing should not be gender bias in-favor of females. The white uniform & white nurses hat has the connotation of the female nurse.

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Specializes in Telemetry, OR, ICU.
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I agree. I worked hard for my cap and felt so professional in my white uniform. Now if a pt sees me they wonder if I'm housekeeping, dietary, or some other dept. My name and title are right on the whiteboard by their bed but they still don't know. The "youngsters" in nursing are the ones who changed it by refusing to wear caps because it :messed my hair up" or "got caught in the curtains." It became optional sometime in the 90's then started fading out. Now the nuses wear baggy hiphugger pants and short tops so you see their belly buttons and thong panties. No one says a thing about it either. Yes, I am an old bag....lol.

What about Male RNs?

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Not a male Army Nurse... for sure! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

BTW, this talk of wearing all whites & the white nurse cap is a :nono:

Why? Nursing should not be gender bias in-favor of females. The white uniform & white nurses hat has the connotation of the female nurse.

Nursing is and always was primarily a female occupation. Men were never required to wear the caps, but were certainly required to wear white. And I don't believe that a complete negation of history by keeping mum about what nurses were traditionally required to wear advances gender neutrality. Start a thread on the history and evolution of the male nursing uniform, or contribute that here.

I plan to wear white, and skirts. I'm working very hard for the privilege. And a nurse, to me, is in a white dress. Unless, of course, the nurse is a guy, and then - well, I don't have an iconic male nurse figure in my head. Up until nursing school I'd never met or had a male one. Which isn't to say anything positive or negative about male nurses.

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A wonderful man is charge nurse on one of our medical surgical units. He wears a white shirt, tie, dark dress pants, and a white lab coat. He alwaus tells patients he is a registered nurse.

He answered call lights and relieves us for breaks and "road trips" when we must accompany a patient to radiology or elsewhere.

A patient told me, "The nurse is a doctor."

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Not a male Army Nurse... for sure! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2:

BTW, this talk of wearing all whites & the white nurse cap is a :nono:

Why? Nursing should not be gender bias in-favor of females. The white uniform & white nurses hat has the connotation of the female nurse.

That's one reason never to go back to the white and caps because it would be gender biased. I also think it is an antiquated image that a lot of people still have in regards to nurses, one that casts us in that subservient handmaiden role that in general still holds the profession back in terms of being taken seriously. We need to strive for a newer image that will move us forward.

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Specializes in Telemetry, OR, ICU.
Nursing is and always was primarily a female occupation. Men were never required to wear the caps, but were certainly required to wear white. And I don't believe that a complete negation of history by keeping mum about what nurses were traditionally required to wear advances gender neutrality. Start a thread on the history and evolution of the male nursing uniform, or contribute that here.

I plan to wear white, and skirts. I'm working very hard for the privilege. And a nurse, to me, is in a white dress. Unless, of course, the nurse is a guy, and then - well, I don't have an iconic male nurse figure in my head. Up until nursing school I'd never met or had a male one. Which isn't to say anything positive or negative about male nurses.

No, nursing has not always been primarily a female occupation. The world's first nursing school founded in India about 250 B.C. Only men were considered "pure" enough to become nurses.

*Furthermore, Men served as nurses in one capacity or another from the Revolutionary War until 1901. Ironically, with the founding of the Army Nurse Corps in 1901 men were excluded by law from such service. It was not until 9 AUG 1955, when President Eisenhower signed into law H.R. 2559, that Male RNs were authorized reserve commissions in the ANC. In 1961, Ohio Representative Frances Payne Bolton introduced a bill to Congress to authorize regular commissions for Male RNs.

However, 11 years passed before Male RNs were to receive regular commissions in the ANC. Due to efforts made by the 12th Chief of the ANC, COL Mildred Irene Clark, on 30 SEP 1966 [Public law 89-609] authorized regular commissions for Male RNs. So, eleven years elapsed between the time the first Male RN was commissioned in the ANC in the USAR & when Male RNs were allowed to apply for a regular commission.

*Source from the book written by Mary T. Sarnecky, COL ®, USA, A History of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps [iSBN 0-8122-3502-9].

I have plenty of positives to report about female nurses, too bad you don't feel the same towards male RNs. My wife has been an RN for +12 years and I cannot remember the last time she wore the whites, especially the white skirt, LOL. Yes, I wore the whites while in ADN program until the last semester when we were told to start wearing scrubs.

BTW, my previous post did NOT mean to imply any negativity to the history of the white skirts & white nurses hat. Please, accept my apologies for unintentionally offending historical significance of the whites. My thoughts are only that the white skirt perpetuates the gender bias that all nurses are females.

I would hope that someday the civilian nurse profession will not be dominated by either gender.

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I've never had to wear a white cap, thank you God.

I don't discount the history of nursing at all. But I personally think all white connotes subservience or the ice cream man.

But that is another thread . . . and there are many here on allnurses.

I'll have to ask others at work if our little rural hospital ever required caps.

I also think we should each wear what we like . . . if you like all white with a cap than go for it. As professionals, we should be able to choose our own clothing.

steph

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