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

[DesiDani]

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

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

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.

Without meaning any disrespect, are you SURE that the patients know the color coding, even if it is posted throughout the hospital, in each patient's room, in a brochure on their bedside table and the screen on their huge television set? Because I've not found that to be the case. The patients STILL don't know that navy is the nurse, CNA is maroon and not to ask the person in teal for a pain pill.

[Hancock330]

In some places, state regulations REQUIRE employers of RNs and LPNs to put their status in letters an inch high on their name tags. This can be VERY helpful to rational patients. Those with dementia probably won't know but everyone else will be able to tell. Even folks who don't have their glasses on will be able to tell if "this person is a nurse" when the person gets close to the patient.

[UnicDrgn]

Only white I see in my area being worn is by the local LPN and RN nursing students for clinicals. I actually am proud of my hat and would be proud to wear it, but have been told it is an infection control issue. I try to wear color whenever possible besides navy blue (our RN required uniform color). I do understand how hard it is to get stains out of white though! Working in the ER i would probably go nuts keeping my whites white!

[UnicDrgn]

Only white I see in my area being worn is by the local LPN and RN nursing students for clinicals. I actually am proud of my hat and would be proud to wear it, but have been told it is an infection control issue. I try to wear color whenever possible besides navy blue (our RN required uniform color). I do understand how hard it is to get stains out of white though! Working in the ER i would probably go nuts keeping my whites white!

[elkpark]

I actually am proud of my hat and would be proud to wear it, but have been told it is an infection control issue.

That is a red herring created by nurses who didn't want to wear caps. There haven't been any studies I've ever heard of that have supported that idea, and caps have never been any more of an infection control issue than lots of other things in the healthcare setting that we never worry about.

[Tommy5677]

Just last month in the ER. Full garb.

[tokmom, BSN, RN]

From a purely patient perspective - I miss the days where nurses wore white uniforms and a cap. A patient knew immediately who was a nurse. They knew from the cap whether the person was an RN or an LPN. If you were knowledgeable, you could even tell where they went to school just from their cap.

Now the patient has no idea whether the person who just came into their room wearing scrubs is a Dr, nurse, CNA, housekeeping, dietary, transporter, phlebotomist, student, etc. That white uniform and cap proclaimed that the person wearing it was a trained, licensed, medical professional.

How did the patient know the school and degree? I've been a nurse forever, and I couldn't tell you that!

Does/Did the RN have more or less stripes?

[tokmom, BSN, RN]

In some places, state regulations REQUIRE employers of RNs and LPNs to put their status in letters an inch high on their name tags. This can be VERY helpful to rational patients. Those with dementia probably won't know but everyone else will be able to tell. Even folks who don't have their glasses on will be able to tell if "this person is a nurse" when the person gets close to the patient.

Except our badges flip over...all the time...UGH.

[elkpark]

How did the patient know the school and degree? I've been a nurse forever, and I couldn't tell you that!

Does/Did the RN have more or less stripes?

Back when caps were common, some schools had v. distinctive caps, and people who were knowledgeable about caps could often tell what school you attended by the cap you wore. Same with school pins.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

When I did my very first clinical there was this very elderly nurse (I'm not sure if she was an RN or LVN) who wore the white dress and the stockings, a pair of white SAS shoes and the navy cardigan. It was a very moment for me. When I went back three years later to do my immersion, she was still there, rocking the same attire. Still somewhat bizarre for me but now it was more endearing, especially as I had learned much more about the history of nursing and that she embodied something that perhaps got lost along the way as things became more "modern."

[DoGoodThenGo]

That is a red herring created by nurses who didn't want to wear caps. There haven't been any studies I've ever heard of that have supported that idea, and caps have never been any more of an infection control issue than lots of other things in the healthcare setting that we never worry about.

*Thank you!*

How something that is suspended several feet above a patient could be a vector for infection is a bit of myth that gained traction more by those who didn't want to wear the things over any sort of proven science.

Again some nurses than and now wore the same ratty sweater shift after shift (and left in hospital) that hardly ever was laundered. Ditto today for lab coats that get hung up in locker rooms and or elsewhere that rarely laundered routinely. Physicians are notable for this and yet you'll have to pry those long white coats out of their cold dead hands.

One of the real reasons against caps and even uniforms began to take hold when hospitals/facilities stopped providing laundry services for nurses, and or reimbursement allowances for same.

Before modern washing machines became common enough and or caps required special laundering and starching it was routine that places either laundered them in the facility's laundry and or gave nurses a stipend towards maintaining their uniforms. Today if you are lucky and do the vintage thing you'll find older uniforms and caps with various laundry marks and or name tags/written. Many old laundries (especially those that did "French" or other hand laundry) also did nurse's caps, again vintage price lists reflect.

As automatic washing machines became more common (either at home or self-serve), coupled with the arrival of easy care fabrics (all cotton gave way to poly-cotton blends at best, worst were all nylon, Dacron or whatever), places withdrew offering nurses "free" or subsidized laundry services.

Again this is where the whole "unsanitary" nonsense about caps started. Faced with spending part of her day off washing or whatever her cap many nurses decided they had better things to do with their free time. So the things rarely saw cleaning and were often just taken off and tossed inside, on top of or whatever in locker rooms between use.

[DoGoodThenGo]

How did the patient know the school and degree? I've been a nurse forever, and I couldn't tell you that!

Does/Did the RN have more or less stripes?

It may seem funny to youngsters today, but there was (and for some still is) a time when caps were *VERY* serious business.

The primary unwritten rule/law is that you are only entitled to wear a cap from the school the school that awarded your degree/diploma. Nurses who received further post graduate degrees sometimes could get another, but that varied. If you look at pictures of vintage capping/pinning ceremonies often you see one or more instructors wearing caps different than the graduates. These nurses obviously attended a different school than where they were now teaching.

If one didn't wish to or couldn't find one's school cap the accepted deviation from this rule were any of the generic caps, however the rules regarding stripes still largely prevailed. Notice that in media depictions (books, films, television, etc...) nurses were almost always shown wearing *generic* caps rather than that belonging to any particular school.

Both schools and often hospitals/facilities had rules about where and when one could wear/be seen in a cap (or assigned uniform). This most always appeared in student/employee handbooks and violations could be grounds for instant dismissal. Students often were forbidden from appearing in advertisements or endorsements in uniform (and cap) without explicit written consent from her school. You also could be dismissed for being seen in places of "low" repute in uniform (bars, taverns, etc...).

Second unwritten rule/law is that stripes *do* mean something. At very basic level the number and color indicated one was a graduate nurse with a degree/diploma.

Many diploma schools had a system of awarding stripes. First year girls either wore no cap or it was plain. As they moved up in years stripe or stripes would be added to signify their grade, finally upon graduation the stripe or stripes would change again to indicate "GN" status. Black is the normal band color for graduate nurses, though some schools added gold or other colors. Other schools didn't do the whole stripe/band thing at all.

Since diploma schools were largely attached to hospitals/facilities at that time this was an easy way for other nurses and or physicians to tell at a glance the grade of any nurse in question. Since students/probation nurses at one time (well into the 1950's IIRC) provided large amounts of patient care it was necessary for patients and anyone else to be able to tell who was what, especially if the stuff hit the fan and you needed to lay hands on a licensed nurse.

Within local areas nursing schools were known by their caps. If you did your training say at Mount Sinai in NYC but moved out to Detroit, Michigan you'd likely stand out because of that cap. Patients and others would often ask about the foreign headgear in their presence.

Cannot recall the exact number now; but at their height there were thousands of hospital based nursing programs. What you saw would largely depend on how much "action" your town/area got. That is if you were in some small or rural place you probably got nurses from local schools. But in larger urban areas that not only had many schools of nursing but were magnets for migration (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc...) you could see nurses wearing caps from from local schools to one two or three thousand miles away.

Some caps were distinctive either because of their shape and or reputation of the school. Bellevue Hospital, Saint Vincent's hospitals of New York City, Philadelphia General, Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing in Charlotte, NC, and others. Of course the cap meant nothing if these schools didn't produce graduates with the juice to back it up; but they did.

The merger between Hunter College and Bellevue Hospital school of nursing was almost derailed due to objections from then staff and alumni about the CUNY college getting their mitts on the famous Bellevue cap. Opposition backed down when Hunter gave assurances they had a cap of their own and in any case (IIRC) left rights to the Bellevue cap out of the merger.

Caps from such schools as noted above are very difficult to find (I've *NEVER* seen a Bellevue cap or student uniform hit the open market, *LOL*), which leads one to assume grads of said program are still very protective of the things. Am not saying if you encounter a graduate of such a program and are wearing "their" cap without permission she won't yank it off your head, but it might be wise to watch your back. *LOL*

Civilization.ca - One Hundred Years of Nurses' Caps - Cap Bands