Would you quit over white uniforms?

If your facility went back to white uniforms for licensed nursing personnel, would you quit? Just wondering as I've heard discussions about some facilities going back to all white for nursing staff.

[GHGoonette, BSN, RN]

Yeah well, now you're not talking so much about uniforms as distinguishing devices. My country still uses the old epaulettes to designate an RN, except in theatre. Regardless what colour uniform the nurses are wearing, the RNs wear maroon eps. Used to be the ENs wore white eps and the ENAs had distinguishing badges, but in an ever-increasingly PC conscious and consequently petty world, these have been phased out. I personally think it was a dumb, unnecessary move, and remains proof positive that those charged with making decisions on our behalf are not always the best qualified to do so.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

Ah, the sweet smell of logic!

When I was a nursing student they brought in a male Director of Nurses. One of his first edicts was to demand nurses begin wearing nursing caps again. I was one of seven male nursing students that year, and although exempt, the female nursing students were required to wear their caps. I was stunned that the cap was considered part of being a good nurse. So all the males went out and bought the Nursing school's cap. Whoever designed these caps was not an engineer. They hardly stayed on a woman's head, let alone a man with short hair. We had researched the cap and found it to be remnant from the time before Nightingale, when prostitutes were the usual nurses as they had seen naked men before, and would not be scandalized doing it as a profession. The main purpose of the cap was to keep the head lice which were very common back then, from dropping onto the patients.Using this prerogative we petitioned the DON to reconsider his edict to return caps to the profession as an form of ID for nurses. It didn't work until it just became another thing that was eventually just not followed as it was just not functional in a modern nursing context.

White uniforms are almost as bad. Trying to keep these clean during a hard day in the life of a nurse was always a difficult proposition, and I threw out many a white uniform stained with charcoal in an ED scenario. Specific colors for specific hospital staff doesn't work either as we went to purple in the ED at one time, and I looked like a walking grape. Then we found out that black uniforms showed more then white did at times, beside being depressing, and whole papers have been written about wearing red uniforms in some emotional scenarios.

So why can't we just have really big ID badges that says REGISTERED NURSE?

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

It begins with a good looking young man strutting out before the camera wearing immaculate blue scrubs and a scope slung around his neck saying "my patients look to me as a hero....." and on it goes. As the spot extolls the various and prestigious benefits of being a member of the "exciting healthcare community" it cuts to other "medical assistants" wearing equally immaculate blue scrubs with scopes slung around their necks performing various nursing related functions (taking BP, handling vials of drawn blood (implication that the MA drew it?), and so forth. The set is all calm and cool bluish tinged and you get the idea these medical assistants are more nurses than assistants.

Now I know why I shouldn't wear white. I would see this ad, puke, and get my scrubs dirty.

[mhusen5]

You get it...DoGoodThenGo!

Great post!