When did you last see a nurse wearing the old school garb?

[DesiDani]

Cap, white stockings, and all. Do you have one?

[Khaan]

Because you look like a professional who takes herself seriously and needs to be taken seriously by others, not someone who came to work in her pajamas.

I resent that statement. I am very professional in my scrub attire.

[Khaan]

You do at my hospital. All scrubs are color coded. Nurses in navy, CNAs in maroon, resp in black, lab in teal, housekeeping has a woodland top, X-ray in light blue, docs are the only ones in white coats. It's posted throughout the hospital and each patients room.

Yuck, talk about morale issues. If I had to wear a color I didn't like every day I'd go insane.

[nursel56]

The last time I saw a nurse in old-school garb was 2008. Her shoes were white high-heeled pumps, though, she looked great but heels? Oh no, no, no. I became a nurse to keep away from those things! (kidding!)

Although whites and caps were still in wide use at the time, I never wore a cap, because I started in a pediatric hospital. We wore white pants and shoes and colored tops.

[KathyDay]

Symbol of subservience to doctors?? Really? Where the heck did that come from? I went to nursing school...yes, a 3 year TRAINING program, that put out some of the best prepared and ready to perform nurses around. The cap was a symbol of accomplishment....the stripe according to the color depicted the years of training you had completed and finally the black strip indicated that you had graduated and were now a fully trained and prepared RN. So, under no circumstances did I or any of my classmates ever think the cap was a symbol of subservience. That being said, wearing a cap has mostly gone by the wayside. They are not easily cleaned and can carry disgusting stuff, and they also get in the way, particularly in a busy ICU or ER...bumping on equipment. Still, I loved the cap and the whites. Some of the outfits I see on new young nurses are very unprofessional and disturbing (low cut scrub pants with string bikini showing over top of them) and skin tight scrubs...just to name a few. What profession are those young women really in?? And the men whose crackage shows when they bend over to do something. Clean, crisp, bright and well fitting scrubs are the best. It is so important to all of us, young or old, to project a professional image.

[moldyoldyrn]

I have my School cap and my Navy nurse's cap with my rank stripes on it. I plan on having both bronzed and made into bookends. I respect them but would never wear them again. I wish I had my last pair of white clinic shoes. They are now collectors items. No to the white hose. No to the white dress. I can remember my first white dress uniform it was a "White Swan" brand. Never would wear a dress again either. Pants only, I did too much crawling around on the floor and squatting to go back to a dress. The thing I am most proud of and still display is my School pin from Emory University. That is my "stunner". I don't care what anyone else thinks, it is MY stunner. I always felt bad for the male nurses I worked with long ago, they had no cap equivalent. I always felt they got cheated. They were probably happy without them but they were a rather powerful and meaningful symbol. As a matter of fact when the old "RN" journal came out once a year with the pin and cap issues, where they displayed pins and caps from all over the US, I always loved reading that. It was fun to see how crazy some of the caps were. My cap was rather sedate.

[DoGoodThenGo]

If it is of any consolation to you places like New York City/State and several other local governments have passed "gender equality" laws designed to "protect" transgenders mainly.

The upshot in NYC is that absent some *VERY* good reason employers and or schools cannot have gender specific uniforms and or make requirements that apply to only one sex but not the other.

What it comes down to as it relates to this conversation is that if nurse "Bruce Jenner" leaves on Friday and reports for duty as "Caitlyn Jenner" on Monday in a starched whites (dress or skirt) and wearing a cap there is little the hospital can do. Ditto if a male nurse wants to wear a cap the facility pretty much will have little recourse; long as they allow it for females. So images like this may not be so far fetched: https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/interesting-nursing-school-461939.html

When it comes to nursing programs within NYC the same applies; but don't think there are any left that still use uniforms with mandatory dresses/skirts and nil have caps.

New York City unveils new rules on gender discrimination | Business News | US News

[DoGoodThenGo]

As discussed in another thread regarding caps (see: https://allnurses.com/nursing-news/no-caps-are-462585-page12.html ), there was or is nothing "unsanitary" or difficult about keeping the things clean.

Will give you that some of the older heavily starched and ironed caps (Philadelphia General's "Philly Fluff", Mount Sinai, Bellevue, Saint Vincent's (New York), and others) required laundering skills that were beyond the average female. In those instances the caps were sent back to the school or to their approved laundry for cleaning. There was one laundry in the country that did the Philly Fluff cap (it required not only skilled laundering but a particular blend of starches then goffering), so that is where you had to send it.

However the introduction of Kay's Caps and others of "Perma-Starch" caps meant pretty much all that starching and ironing was no longer required. One simply took off any bands (if removable) swished around in warm water and detergent, perhaps scrubbing any badly soiled areas, rinse well, then let dry. Drying could also be accomplished by slapping the wet cap onto a flat surface (bathroom tiles, refrigerator, marble slab used for rolling out dough, etc..) and let dry. If wanted a light touch with a moderately warm steam iron finished the process. End of story.

Only way caps got "unsanitary" is because of how they were treated. Nurses who respected and kept themselves, uniforms and caps nice never laid the things just anywhere. Cap came out of cap case and went on head at start of duty, process reversed at end of shift. The thing was transported to and from duty in same case and once a week on "laundry day" the one or more were cleaned and then put back into case.

OTOH you had girls who would take their caps on and off during the course of a shift and lay it anywhere (nurse's station, break room, rest room, locker room,). That and or and end of duty the thing was thrown into or on top of locker if not shoved on the floor under it.

I'd be a lot more worried about those white coats many nurses seem to do everything but sleep in but are often alien to daily or weekly laundering as a source of patient infection over a cap.

Pop quiz anyone? Quiz: How much do you know about the nursing cap? | Scrubs - The Leading Lifestyle Nursing Magazine Featuring Inspirational and Informational Nursing Articles

[djh123]

There was one at a hospital (which didn't hire me, argggggh) where I interviewed a few years ago.

[Hancock330]

I graduated with my BSN in the late 60s. The women in my class wore light yellow dresses (with A-line skirts). We wore caps with student stripes on them, and after graduation the stripe changed to reflect the school colors. Our cap -- well, one patient said it looked like a flying bedpan and another said it looked like the back of a '57 Chevy. The poor man in our class had to wear a short-sleeved white shirt buttoned up to the neck and a clip on bow tie and white pants.

My first job out of nursing school I was required to wear the white dress-style uniform and my cap. The blasted cap caught on the bed curtains and was a constant irritant. However, if I took it off the night supervisor scolded me. And, I won't go into to detail regarding the view from the rear of (in particular overweight) nurses stretched across a patient in a bed (when the bed was in low position) or a stretcher. The claim that dresses were more modest than pants was given the lie then. My second job, in the early 70s, there was a day when 2 of the RNs dared to wear those new "pant suit" style uniforms to work and were sent home to change into "uniforms" and their pay docked because they were late when they got back.

Gradually, the rules changed here, there and everywhere. The caps were NO loss to hospital nurses. The white uniforms, well, I always wore white unless I had to wear something different. Regardless of when, where, or why nurses started wearing white, it became the color associated with the profession of nursing. If you ask the members of the public, it probably is still the color associated with the profession of nursing -- and up to maybe a decade ago, research showed that many adults would prefer for nurses to still wear some variation of a white uniform.

It can also be important to remember that how a nurse (or any other worker) dresses can ease the process of establishing trust from a patient or make it more difficult. Almost ANY form of dress can be overcome, but I never understood why one would choose to dress so that a very important part of one's job would be made harder. Another comment is this, "What part of "professional nurse" dressed to go to work does "cute" address?" Clearly, in some settings cute is appropriate -- peds comes to mind -- and sometimes on holidays. But, if you never know when you may have to console a grieving family or deliver some kind of sad news to a patient -- in which cases, "cute" may come across as disrespectful.

Too many nurses who wear scrubs to work don't do anything to make them look "neat" -- the scrubs are wrinkled and some are too loose or too tight. And the v-necked scrubs sometimes mean that when a nurse leans over to care for a patient, the patient can see significant portions of the nurse's chest anatomy. None of this makes acceptance of the nurse as a competent professional something that some patients find easy. Again, almost anything can be overcome, but why make the process more difficult for yourself or your patients?

A final comment about the caps. For several years I did presentations to my sons' elementary school classes where I took a torso anatomical model from the learning lab -- the one with the removable organs --, several stethoscopes from the learning lab (and alcohol swabs for cleaning the ear pieces), examples of needles, taped to a piece of card stock with the tips covered with the needle cover, etc., to let very young children get more comfortable around the trappings of health care settings. Each presentation included a station where the children could use a piece of white copy machine paper and follow an example and make a nurse's cap. No station was required but most of the girls and some of the boys wanted to make the cap. One year one little girl came to me and said "I still have my cap I made last year. Can I make me another one?" The cap is no longer an accurate reflection of what nurses wear to work, thank goodness, but for many members of the public, it is still associated with all that's good about the profession of nursing.

[dlgrn715]

I work with a nurse who went to the same school I did, only I believe she graduated about the same time I was born - the early 70s. She still wears the same white cap that she earned and even wears some if the actual clothing that she wore when she started off her nursing career back in those days. She does not wear skirts now though, but wears all white. She leaves her cap in her locker and puts it on before she gets report. Every patient thinks she's the charge nurse, of course. She is one of the best nurses I have ever worked with and deserves that respect from patients and nurses alike. I like to see other people's responses when they see her.

[jujubee318]

Omg! The last 9 days! I am a temp and I have been working at this facility that is stuck in the past. Very small nursing home 3 hall and maybe 70 patients. I am a new LPN graduated in may 2016. The LPN at the facility wear all white,no hats tho. And they have their pins on.

I was taken back. I saw a suction machine that was so old. I was like Omg wtw is this. They also dont sinks in the patient rooms,or bathrooms period. That I DID NOT like. But hey when in Rome for a few days walk like a roman

[4boysmama]

There was a nurse on the med0surg floor where i did clinicals who wore cap, white dress and stockings. she still works there, according to a friend who now works that floor. I tried to convince my classmates that we should wear white dresses to pinning, but no one wanted to. We wore white scrubs, which really didn't look good on any of us lol