In a few months, it is going to be mandatory that all nurses (RNs and LPNs) wear wine colored scrubs. Top, pants, and jacket - all wine colored. All ancillary staff (secretaries, nursing assistants, etc) will be wearing tan scrubs. Who buys them? Not the hospital! YOU, the ever-pushed around employee gets to purchase all new plain jane ugly solid colored scrubs.
If the unit you work on supplies hospital laundered scrubs, you may continue to wear those. (Example: we have hospital laundered scrubs in a ceil blue color. Many nurses/ancillary staff do like to wear these, because it means no laundry at home after working all day/eve/night. Almost all physicians and nurse-midwives also wear the hospital supplied scrubs.)
This is all in the name of trying to ensure that patients can tell who is the nurse and who is not the nurse.
Funny. That big old tag on my badge that you gave me last year, the bright red thing? It has RN in super huge letters. Granted, some of our clientele cannot read. I will give that point. However, most can read. And I've noticed that many DO read our badges. We also introduce ourselves when we first meet each patient. Plus we write our name and personal hospital phone extension (those lovely spectralink phones) on the whiteboard that is placed in each patient room.
I admit, I have been referred to as "the midwife", "the doctor", and yes, "the nurse". By patients and visitors. I just gently correct them when they call me midwife (squeeeeeeeeee! soon enough!) or doctor (maybe someday??). It's not a big deal to me, actually. If a patient mistakenly calls one of our ancillary staff members a nurse, they simply tell the patient that they will go get their nurse for them. Easy peasy.
Here is a hospital in Wisconsin who implemented quite a variety of different colored scrub combinations, depending upon what your licensure/job title is. Talk about confusing! Ready? "Registered Nurses at Gunderson will wear white tops with navy blue slacks, while Licensed Practical Nurses will wear Caribbean blue and Medical Assistants will wear grey."
White top + navy pants = RN
Caribbean blue = LPN
Grey = medical assistant
Here is another hospital that has required scrub colors. I can agree with no denim and no Spongebob (unless you work in peds), but here is their breakdown:
"Nurses will wear white, with red, navy or black bottoms. Pharmacists in the emergency department will wear olive. EMTs and certified nurse assistants will wear red, black or navy, and there will be a color-coded chart in each patient's room to keep score."
Yeah. You read that right. A color-coded chart for patients to keep score. I'd need a chart to keep it straight too!
White top + red, navy or black pants = Nurse
Olive = pharmacists in the emergency department (???)
Red, black, or navy = EMTs and CNAs (who will now be confused with the same color for nurses)
Confused? Yeah. Me too. Imagine being a patient. "Yeah, my nurse, the one with the red pants. Or was it the navy pants? Olive? Can I just get some pain meds please?"
So, do clothes really make the nurse?
Maybe go back to all white? (oh, the horrors!)
And finally, here is a good list of pros and cons of standardized nursing scrubs.
18 comments:
I like organized scrubs. My husband is a PT & @ his hospital, each dept has their assigned color of scrub & you can order from a variety of styles, and they embroderier the facility name & their dept on them. PT/OT wears black, Nursing staff (RN, LVN )wear blue & CNA turquoise, Radiology wears grey, RT wears teal. Anyway, I think it makes the staff look uniform.
I am currently in nursing school & noticed on my peds rotation that the nurses there wore same scrubs on a given day, but not the same set each day. Again I like it.
BTW, my husbands hospital pays for them....since they require it, they should!
My hospital just switched to uniform scrubs too...everyone hated it to start and there was endless complaining before it happened, but no one seems to mention/notice it anymore. The only issue that seemed to persist was that everyone was required to buy from the same vendor, and some people don't like the fabric they use. I didn't have to switch as an LC, we just wear business casual, but we are supposed to wear specific jackets and the fabric gave me a hard time too until I laundered it multiple times. Don't know what the patients think! So if it makes you feel any better, I think it seems like a pain upfront but is OK in the end. Except for the part where they make you buy them! At least our hospital bought everyone a few sets to start.
Yep, my hospital switched over and of course there was complaining galore at first, but it does end up being easier, especially since we are a teaching hospital. The patients (and students) do seem to like it. Nurses- navy blue, CAs - burgundy, Phleb - teal, everyone else has a different color top with black scrub pants. Docs and NPs where lab coats + appropriate attire.
All the hospital's L&D units I have ever worked at - except one - supplied the scrubs. I really didn't care what color....as long as they bought and laundered them.
The color coding scheme just confuses me to no end. I would think that the name tag would be good enough. That's how I would remember my nurse. Or by their face......
If I saw someone in tan scrubs and was needing a nurse, I wouldn't think to myself, "Oh, tan scrubs. Not a nurse. Secretary." I think if your hospital requires special scrubs they should be provided. I mean really. If a lady in lady bug scrubs comes into my room I would assume she was there to help me. Wouldn't matter what her title was :)
We have uniforms at my hospital. Nurses wear any combo of purple and white (I always wear all purple), CNAs wear teal and black, pleb has a different color, imaging, enviro services wear a non-scrub professional-looking uniform. I really like the uniforms. I think it's very professional. We can express our own style with earrings, fancy badge clips, etc.
I think it's TERRIBLE you're expected to pay for your own scrubs! Our hospital pays for two pair each year, I think it might only be one pair if you're PRN, can't remember. I've been working there for a little over two years and I have a bureau drawer full of purple scrubs. That, my dear, is BS.
I thought L&D nurses wore the hospital cooperative ciel blue OR scrubs? Since it's such a "splashy" floor. That was my experience in RN school as well as when I had my son.
They do the same thing here in the hospitals who require scrubs. I talked to a clerk in a uniform shop who told me that the embroidery also adds to your cost.
We keep changing policy, but so far, no color requirements. We're union so that's another reason why they're not mandated.
I do think RNs should be differentiated from other staff. I get so tired of explaining that I am different than a nurse assistant.
Where I used to work the medical staff wore scrubs in one color and non-medical support staff (insurance clerks, house keeping, etc) wore khakis and polos that matched the scrub colors so everyone coordinated but you could obviously identify who to ask about not being able to breathe. And they were provided, so 5 sets of scrubs 3 times a year. It was nice.
Long comment lost...but as a patient and parent of patients I prefer color-coded scrubs. Name tags are more often than not flipped around or covered by keys or other cards on the laniard. Nursing staff in one color, envrionmental services in another, ancillary staff (unit secretaries, transport etc..)any lab coat needs to embroidered with service and preferrably name (Phleb, imaging etc...) This especially becomes necessary when at a university hospital and you add student nurses and their teachers, med students, interns, residents etc... When I am a bleary-eyed half awake mom on day 3 in the hospital at 6AM it would great to know at a glance who was coming into the room.
The scrubs or polo shirts or whatever should be distributed by the hospital and have the hsopital name stamped on the pocket. I think it defeats some of the purpose if anyone can go to the scrub store and dress like a nurse, janiotor etc....
Child Life Specialists in our Children's hospital wear royal blue polos with Child Life embroiderd on them. You know as soon as they approach the door who they are. All staff should be like that.
My hospital requires RN/LPN to wear navy and/or white; techs/nursin assistants wear marooon/white; PT/OT wear black; radiology wears royal blue. I miss the days of fun scrubs (I'm a NICU nurse in a children's hospital--let me wear something fun). We were given ONE pair of scrubs when we switched to uniforms a little over a year ago, but that is it.
Feh. Despite my well-documented dislike of scrubs which tend to infantilize nurses, I don't actually see the point in this --- I'm not very convinced patients will get the distinction between the guy in the white top and the teal pants and the gal dressed like an avocado. It seems to me the whole business is an exercise in reinforcing hospital hierarchy, in any case.
Putting signs in the role to decode the uniforms is just stupid --- patients don't read signs, period.
The hospital I go to color codes by department, so ER is tan/black, surgery is aqua, etc.
The nursing home I work at has certain combinations aids can wear. Nurses wear either white or navy blue pants with whatever scrub tops they want. When you're hired as an aide and are full time, you are given two uniforms and get a new one on your anniversary; any extras you have to buy through them.
Speaking as a patient, when I've been in hospital I've been drugged and/or not wearing my glasses so I had no idea who I was talking to at any giving point or if they even wore a name tag. The upside of color coding is that it would help the patient - if they're cognizant enough given their medical condition - know who's who. But when I was sick enough to be in the hospital, I wouldn't have known the difference and I didn't much care as long as I got what I needed. The sad thing is I was more likely to remember the names of the ones who were inappropriate or lazy or mean - because they were the exception. Most of the staff was so good to me that they all just blended together.
I just switched jobs, and in the ED all staff except docs wear navy or royal blue. I think that department-wide color coordination does give a more professional appearance, but I don't think that color-coordinating by profession (RN, LPN, NA, PA, MD...) helps patients keep straight who is who... how many color codes are they supposed to remember? How many are WE supposed to remember?! The solution to the problem of a patient not knowing how the nurse is, is to have staff consistently introduce themselves by their name and their profession at the beginning of each interaction. We also have the big ugly giant red "RN" tag on our name badges, that might help but half the time it just pulls the neck of my scrubs down or my pocket open and flips around so it's facing the wrong way anyways!!
What are float pool nurses supposed to do in hospitals like that? Own a set of every color? Do they have extras in the staffing office? What if you switch floors? Have to buy all new scrubs? I understand the idea behind it, but don't really see it working in real life.
-RNmon
I always think it's kinda gross that all hospital staff don't wear hospital-supplied scrubs. You spend your shift getting coughed/sneezed/puked/peed/bled on, and then you wear the scrubs home - stopping by the grocery store on the way home and taking the germs with you. ('You' in the general sense, doctors do it all the time too, with the hospital issue scrubs no less.) I know part of the point of scrubs is that they're easy to launder, but aren't they also so stuff stays at the hospital and isn't carried out in to the public?
My hospital supplies scrubs to the high-impact departments like ER, OR, L&D. I work in the ER and although I try to be careful, THERE WILL BE BLOOD. If someone's freaking dying on me, I don't waste time trying to stay at arms length to protect my scrubs. All employees, regardless of job title wear the same color. The patients don't seem to care at all. And hell yes we have pharmacists! You TOTALLY need a PharmD during codes and traumas, especially when you take peds patients.
The nice thing about color-coded scrubs for different departments is that at least everyone knows immediately who works where. Hopefully it makes it easier for patients too!
Post a Comment