With all of the problems currently plaguing the nursing profession, one would think–and hope–that hospitals and nurse administrators would have better and more pressing things to occupy their mind with. One would hope.

One would also hope that they would consider spending their precious time on figuring out to make their workplace more productive, pleasant, tolerable, and enticing to nurses. One would think that they would be far more concerned with recruiting and retaining staff, than alienating them.

One would hope and think.

Of course, that’s not how it plays in real life. Working conditions at most facilities are getting worse rather than better. And now some facilities have come up with the brainstorm of having nurses go retro–back to those good old days of white uniforms.

Return of the Evil Whites

White uniforms have thankfully, gone the way of the dodo bird for the most part. Most nurses now wear scrubs in a dazzling array of patterns and colors. Some hospitals do have a dress code, but it is not white uniforms. However, over the past few years, hospitals in Georgia, Texas, Illinois and other states have begun a slow and insidious return to the hideous whites that nurses thought they had left far behind them. And the reason for this madness? Hospitals are saying that patients are “confused” and don’t know who their nurse is. Because everyone from dietary to doctors to housekeeping is now wearing scrub clothes, patients are finding it difficult to differentiate their caregivers.

So the nurse has to suffer because of this? How about docs in scrubs? Why not put them into a white uniform so that no one will confuse them with housekeeping?

Whoever originally decided to put nurses in white uniforms was certainly using some type of hallucinogenic. There is not a color on earth that is more impractical for the type of work that a nurse does. And no color begins to look dingy and dirty faster than white.

The Olden Days

In those good old days, hospitals used to launder nurses’ uniforms. So okay, at least they took responsibility for keeping them clean. But those days are long since gone, and now these facilities want nurses to return to white, and be responsible for the constant laundering and bleaching that these clothes require. At least they haven’t started mandating caps. Not yet.

Aside from being a highly unpractical color, wearing white also symbolizes the nurse as being angelic and saintly, pure and pristine, almost the vigin in her white wedding gown. The nurse/angel connection is one of the most damning to the profession, and deciding to bring back whites is a huge step backwards to nurses. If patients are confused, well, provide more clarity. Have all the ancilliary personnel wear a certain color. Have the nurse wear a huge tag that says “RN” on the front of her shirt. Make sure the nurse introduces herself to each patient at the beginning of the shift, and designates that she is the one that any questions or concerns should be directed towards.

Patients will get over it. Believe me, we have had many changes in our society and people adjust. For example, up also quite recently, most doctors were male. So should women have stayed out of medicine because having a female doctor was “confusing” to patients? Most nurses are now women. Should men stay out of nursing because that may confuse patients, to have a male nurse?

Nursing uniforms originally consisted of a colored dress, with a white apron worn over it. Caps were to keep hair out of the face. So white isn’t even the “original” nursing uniform. Maybe we should go back to wearing those cute striped floor length dresses, covered with snowy white aprons, and those starched white bonnets which covered a good part of the nurses’ head.

To me, pushing nurses back into something that was left behind–and left behind for good reason–sort of reeks of trying to exert some sort of control. Mandating a set uniform, putting them back into a color which symbolizes the days when nurses had to stand when a physician walked into the room, trying to impose something which has absolutely no benefit; how about if they asked their nurses what suggestions they had for making themselves more visible to patients? Or their opinion on what they think is the most appropriate attire to wear on the job.

I’ve heard some nurses say that there’s nothing wrong with nurses having a set uniform. Afterall, professions such as firefighters and police have uniforms, which allow them to be recognized by the public. Well, in that line of thought, why don’t doctors have uniforms so that they can be recognized? How about all of the other hospital personnel? Speech therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, phlebotomists, janitors, all the bureaucrats–why don’t they have uniforms?