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| Uniform policy time. |
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by “Man-Nurse” - August 1, 2011
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Provided by The Man-Nurse Diaries
There's a semi-confirmed rumor at work that we're going to adopt uniforms for nurses. This will be house-wide—every RN in the hospital will wear the same thing. The argument is that patients have complained that they don't know who the nurses are. I've heard this argument elsewhere, and I frankly don't believe it. If someone comes at you wearing a stethoscope and carrying a needle, you can kinda figure they're not the housekeeping staff. (If they're are, at least you'll be on the news.) It takes about three milliseconds for a nurse to introduce themselves and establish a professional rapport with the patient they'll be caring for over the next 8 to 12 hours. Do patients forget in that timeframe? Probably not.
I think in all truth it's the physicians who are complaining. We're a huge teaching hospital, so there are literally thousands of physicians. Outside the circle of residents and specialists you always see, I don't know most of these doctors from Adam (or Eve). And they're lost wherever they go, especially the poor primary care physicians trying to find their patients. I'm sure they've complained that they can't readily identify the nurse for their patient, standing at attention and waiting for orders. Heck, they usually can't even find or recognize their patients, but at least they have gowns on.
But on the other hand, I do have to agree that we nurses are a bit, shall we say, casual. At least where I work. The hospital and individual units have frequently issued t-shirts. They bear hospital or unit insignia with varying levels of discernability. They were made back when they were trying to achieve Magnet (big nursing award) status and instill unit pride and all that. Probably more than half of us wear them to work. But I have to admit that a t-shirt and scrub pants feels like working in pajamas.
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In fact this was about to be my next scrub purchase. Including the pipe and slippers. |
Half the time my stethoscope has been flung somewhere and my ID badge is flipped over or hanging off my waistline or hiding, so I can understand that you probably can't figure out who I am if you don't know me. Of course, like I said, my patients know me; but random physicians appearing at random times who are already frustrated at not being able to navigate the unit and find charts? Not so much.
To make matters worse, some people *shifty eyes* have gone on to just wearing plain t-shirts when they're running out of work shirts. Or we sometimes wear the hospital-issued green scrubs, so we look like residents.
So I know I'll feel more professional if I'm forced to actually wear scrubs. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep looking like I'm at a pajama party because that's what's allowed and it works for us. If I thought that patients were really misidentifying me, I'd worry about it. But you know what? People will still think I'm a doctor even if I'm wearing a white dress, white tights, and a red cross on my hat.
Man-Nurse is a registered nurse and father of five. If something he writes doesn't make sense, it probably means he has a kid in his lap who's hitting the keyboard, eating his arm, or needing raspberries blown on their cheeks to keep them quiet. More of his blogs can be found HERE.
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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| Barbara (Northeast Texas) |
on 11 Aug 2011 at 8:33 pm |
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| I work in a critical access hospital here in east Tx on the night shift.As of August 1st we have to wear navy blue(we are RNs) On the night shift there are at the max 6 nurses.Most of the time it is 5 nurses.The pts we take care of would only notice if we werent wearing anything. 9 out of 10 Pts think a male whether he is wearing navy blue or pink,because he is a male think he is a DR.Bottom line I can see this in a large hospital,but in a small hospital like this,I feel is ridiculous.What ou wear doesn't make the nurse. |
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