Mind you, yes there is a highly sexualized “Naughty Nurses” costume, but it’s very far from reality. (Once, in the hospital I saw a very attractive nurse walk by, one I had never seen, with a outfit that was only a step or two away from “Naughty Nurse”, it was too short, too tight, heels were too high and yes, she had white stockings with lines up the back… I goggled, turned to my MD who shrugged and said “Private practice”. So, I guess if you have enough money…)
I’ve worked at my present hospital, off and on, since 1980. I still have my uniform from then and I doubt I’d be allowed to wear it now; I’m expected to wear the current, provided uniform.
Posters who think that capes are practical clearly have never worn one mid-winter at 6:00am. They are not at all good at keeping the wearer warm.
ETA: Capes were for wearing outdoors only. No long sleeves or woolen garments on the ward.
The Opus Dei-owned hospital in Pamplona used to require all female personnel to wear “just below the knee skirts”. Shorter was inmodest; longer was hippy.
I say used because the policy changed after one too many old patients fell off the bed whilte trying to look up a female worker’s skirt. Slacks are now acceptable; there’s bets on whether jeans will become acceptable within this century or it will be next one.
I know. We’re cool. No one does mean offense, it’s just one of those things that gets tiresome when it’s your job to deal with it.
Honestly, I appreciate a good sexy nurse porn as much as the next gal in my off hours. But your post gave me the perfect opportunity to demonstrate why a grown woman would voluntarily wear a teddy bear shirt to work.
Back in the day, the different styles of nurses’ caps corresponded to the school the nurse graduated from; each had its own style, and probies were presented with them at a “capping” ceremony.
My mother graduated from Mass. General nursing school in the 1940’s, and she said the cap there was meant to represent a woman’s uterus. I don’t see it, but that was the folklore.
Indeed. And it’s not just home-health where you wind up with the pervs, either–a former coworker more than once had to elbow a guy who was standing behind her with his dick pressed up against her ass on the pretext of helping her hold his dog.
Then, too, a print is awfully useful for camouflaging blood/pee/vomit spots that didn’t completely rinse out in the sink when you’re having that sort of shift.
I know a several of nurses who wear hats or head coverings- one is Jewish, one Muslim and the others like scrub hats for fashion and hair management reasons. We have at least one other Jewish employee but she does not dress differently from average. I have not seen any ‘nurse hats’ in my years of nursing.
I know a couple of nurses who wear dresses- one is Jewish and the other seems to be a Pentacost or Jehova Witness or something. A third one I know that wears a dress just likes them.
I don’t know any person who wears a cape except the lady at the Dude Ranch last summer, and she was just flamboyant.
I don’t know whether they do it or not, but there used to be one day or week each year where nurses would wear the cap (any maybe uniform) which was unique to the school from which they graduated.
like the others, I suspect that modern health restrictions would prohibit wearing the white dresses and I’m not sure where you would find a cape.
Others in the hospital used to wear all white uniforms too; doctors, for instance.
An old, crude joke, for which I apologize up front:
[spoiler]A man is diagnosed with a rare, potentially fatal prostate disease and told by his doctor that he’ll have to jerk off twice a day or he’ll explode. As he’s leaving the office, he sees, through a slightly open door, another patient getting a blowjob from a beautiful nurse.
He tells his doctor, who shrugs and says, “Same diagnosis; better medical plan.”[/spoiler]
I’m pretty sure it’s just a relic of the days when a “decent woman” always covered her hair in public. Plus nurses’s uniforms were originally based on nuns’ habits (this is really obvious in older British nurse uniforms).
The school nurse at my high school used to show up in a vintage uniform like in the OP (no cape though) to circumvent the district’s ban on Halloween costumes.
All I can say is, according to Mom, the way the Mass General cap was folded, if you looked at it from the top, there was a vaguely pear-shaped fold, which, according to tradition, represented a uterus.
When Cyn was still working the floor once a year they had “old time nurse day” and everyone busted out the white dresses. I made a pattern for a cardstock version of the little hats that worked pretty slick and we printed out a dozen or so of them, prefolded them and they were quite well recieved.
I can’t speak about the nurses’ uniforms worn in the US but ours (in Australia) were more like the UK uniforms and looked like turn-of-the-century servants’ uniforms - hair tucked in under an all-encompassing cap, starched striped or checked blue dress with white collar/cuff combo, starched white apron, black stockings and shoes.
I have to say I have a fondness for the old uniforms but they were a bugger to work in.
Speaking from experience, capes are not as warm as coats and jackets, but they are easier to take off or put on (especially without assistance), and don’t need to be sized very accurately. If you’re going to hand out a cape, you don’t have to worry about if the wearer is a size 4 or a size 16, it’s likely to fit the wearer. Can’t do that with a coat or jacket. It’s also easier to drive and get into and out of cars in a cape.
I don’t wear a nurse’s cape, but I do wear other sorts of capes and shawls and ruanas.
Not a relic at all, at least until the 20th century. It was hygiene. Before women washed their hair every day (which didn’t happen until my mother was a teenager - my grandmother still “gets her hair done” once a week) hair was the dirtiest part of a person. Florence Nightingale (who seems like a total beeeeyotch if you read her biography) made her nurses wear caps to prevent infection, not as a fashion statement.
The different styles of cap became tradition at each school, but the original nursing caps covered the hair more or less completely because hair was (correctly) recognized as filthy stuff back before indoor plumbing and cheap shampoo.
After hanging around a few NHS hospitals lately I can tell you that the outfit linked in the OP would never be allowed. There are loads of signs around the place reminding staff that you should be naked from the elbows down, with reason. "
Our clinical staff are now required to be “naked from the elbow down” when examining patients so that they can hand wash - and wrist wash - more effectively without cuffs and watches getting in the way. That means that a well-dressed doctor no longer wears a jacket and tie or white coat, but has his/her shirt sleeves rolled up. See also: Infection Control." http://www.sdhct.nhs.uk/choosetorbay/qualityofcare/saferpatients/
No one does mean offense, it’s just one of those things that gets tiresome when it’s your job to deal with it.
