Nurse Blogs

After being a nurse for twelve years and never working in a hospital (yes, it is possible!), I have never had a job where I was required to wear scrubs or a uniform. For all of my twelve years, I've worn street clothes---"business casual", as they call it---and while I often complained about having to iron my cotton pants and shirts every week, I never considered the fact that scrubs were a possible fashion choice. Still, in a community health center setting a few years ago, I was indeed on occasion known to wear a (grey) lab coat when the manager was around (only to slip it off as soon as she was gone). 

Interestingly, even as a visiting nurse about nine years ago, I refused to wear scrubs of any kind, and often stained my clothes with Betadyne and other fluids as I dressed wounds and tended to patients. For some reason, I felt that wearing street clothes would make me seem more accessible, less clinical. I considered whether patients would feel more comfortable if I did indeed look more clinical, but I had high approval ratings and how I dressed seemed of little consequence at the time.

Now that I'm working for a visiting nurse/hospice agency, I note that all of my new colleagues wear some sort of scrubs to work. In hospice, we're often dealing with leaky catheters, PCA pumps, enemas, disimpactions, and wounds, thus the idea of wearing scrubs that never need ironing is truly a revelation to me. Having just completed eight years as a Nurse Care Manager where I wore relatively nice clothes to work (lots of ironing, as usual), I am now somewhat thrilled to simply throw on some scrubs and head out the door in the morning. Be that as it may, I'm a firm believer in not wearing scrubs in public once one has been in contact with patients and their body fluids, thus I have a practice of changing clothes before I leave for home at the end of the day. I also notice that I don't necessarily want my profession to be so easily identifiable as I walk down the street or go to the store. My anonymity is still important to me. 

If I worked forty hours a week as a hospice nurse, the scrub thing might sometimes get a little stale, but as a per diem worker, the novetly of wearing those wash-and-wear utilitarian garments is truly that---a novelty whose time has come.