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

[DesiDani]

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

[Asystole RN]

I used to work with a guy who wore all whites with the white shoes and everything. No cap being male and all. He spent most of his childhood in hospitals and the nurses wore all white so he wanted to honor them by respecting their traditions. Really awesome nurse.

[dharlow]

I was privileged to retire a nurse in 2005 who graduated from a diploma program in 1956. She still wore her cap and everyone loved and respected her. I managed to secretly get her spare cap and had a glass case made for it with a placquard with her name and years of being a RN. She was in her 70s and worked 11p-7a 32 hours a week. I was honored to be able to present her cap to her. It was on display for years later at the hospital. She wore her whites proudly!

[elkpark]

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

(Thanks for the shout out to my school -- PHSON)

[MikeyT-c-IV]

I work with an amazing nurse who up until about 5 years ago still wore the whole outfit, cap and all. Our CNO told her that she would no longer be allowed to do that when our hospital went to standardized scrubs. She complied without complaint.

[Hygiene Queen]

Okay, I mentioned earlier in this thread that I respectfully wear my white uniform dress and cap for Halloween. So, I wore it today at my elderly daycare job for our party. Cap, dress, white hose, pin, spiffy white shoes... the whole shabang. Well, as usual, the old folks love it! I must have gotten a hundred complements on how professional and impressive I looked. It was so nice!

But I forgot how crazy some men get over this! Can somebody please tell me what is so sexy about white hose and comfort shoes???? I had one old guy clutch his chest and tell me to check his pulse and later, "If I came to you to get my pulse checked, you'd have to call an ambulance!" Then he and another old guy were ribbing each other and winking while I was passing my meds... Good grief, kinda funny but

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Okay, I mentioned earlier in this thread that I respectfully wear my white uniform dress and cap for Halloween. So, I wore it today at my elderly daycare job for our party. Cap, dress, white hose, pin, spiffy white shoes... the whole shabang. Well, as usual, the old folks love it! I must have gotten a hundred complements on how professional and impressive I looked. It was so nice!

But I forgot how crazy some men get over this! Can somebody please tell me what is so sexy about white hose and comfort shoes???? I had one old guy clutch his chest and tell me to check his pulse and later, "If I came to you to get my pulse checked, you'd have to call an ambulance!" Then he and another old guy were ribbing each other and winking while I was passing my meds... Good grief, kinda funny but

It's sexism at work. You're wearing traditional nursing garb which means he can sexually harass you just like he used to in the "good old days."

[nursel56]

Okay, I mentioned earlier in this thread that I respectfully wear my white uniform dress and cap for Halloween. So, I wore it today at my elderly daycare job for our party. Cap, dress, white hose, pin, spiffy white shoes... the whole shabang. Well, as usual, the old folks love it! I must have gotten a hundred complements on how professional and impressive I looked. It was so nice!

But I forgot how crazy some men get over this! Can somebody please tell me what is so sexy about white hose and comfort shoes???? I had one old guy clutch his chest and tell me to check his pulse and later, "If I came to you to get my pulse checked, you'd have to call an ambulance!" Then he and another old guy were ribbing each other and winking while I was passing my meds... Good grief, kinda funny but

I'm guessing that wouldn't happen if any of my clinical instructors were wearing the traditional garb! Especially the one who was a Navy nurse, haha! Even though her school cap was of the frilly pillbox type, the message was still one of authority.

I find this topic really interesting, because while the sexy aspect is undeniably true, it was balanced by a strong nurse who would have the interns shaking in their shoes if they saw her striding in their general direction. That nurse doesn't mesh well with scripting or customer satisfaction surveys, unfortunately.

[DoGoodThenGo]

As whites (starched or otherwise) began to fade out of the picture many uniform places either closed, merged, or went into other lines including scrubs and cute tops. Shame really as from the 1940's through well into the 1980's makers like Barco, White Swan, and others turned out some perfectly serviceable yet flattering uniforms. Once aprons and pinafores were regulated to mostly students, it left many nures free to wear whatever suited their fancy. Long as the thing met dress code (usually mainly about hemlines, color, and sleeve length), the field was wide open. As such many nurses chose their uniforms pretty much the same as females do for any other "business/working" attire; fit, form and fashion. I mean if you were a girl/woman with a nice shape just because the code specified "whites" that didn't mean you had to wear a gunny sack.

NNC (Navy Nursing Corps) - WOMEN'S SERVICES - U.S. Militaria Forum

[DoGoodThenGo]

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

Last day of Saint Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, NYC before it closed. A gradate of their nursing program wore her school cape, cap along with whites to mark the passing of now both the school and now hospital into history.

News media was there and made a point of interviewing/showing a "Saint Vincent's nurse in traditional garb" on what was the last day of the place.

[elkpark]

It's sexism at work. You're wearing traditional nursing garb which means he can sexually harass you just like he used to in the "good old days."

There's an occasional jerk wherever you go. I didn't ever encounter any sexual harassment, or hear about any of my peers experiencing it, back in the "good old days" when we worked in whites and cap.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

There's an occasional jerk wherever you go. I didn't ever encounter any sexual harassment, or hear about any of my peers experiencing it, back in the "good old days" when we worked in whites and cap.

Possibly because we didn't call it sexual harassment then. It was just one of those things you learned to deal with.

[elkpark]

Possibly because we didn't call it sexual harassment then. It was just one of those things you learned to deal with.

No, I mean that I didn't encounter (or hear my peers talk about encountering) anything that we would call sexual harassment today. I'm not saying that means it didn't exist -- just that it was certainly not ubiquitous.