Nurses: scrubs in public?

Factual Questions
1

A question that has been bumping along in my mind, especially since I’ve see lots of nurses on campus lately…

Are ‘scrubs’, the classic pastel-coloured nurses’ uniform, intended for street use? I see nurses all the time here wearing them, presumably on the way to work or class. Obviously they are being used as street wear. But my impression for somewhere was that the uniform was intended for use on the job, in operating rooms, etc. Don’t people have to change when entering/exiting the sterile areas? What about regular hospital desk-work? I’ve certainly seen enough people wearing scrubs there.

What are typical policies? Are the students just wearing them as a uniform, and if they go to actual medical situations, do they have to change anyways?

2

Scrubs worn in surgical areas should be changed into and out of within the hospital, but otherwise they can be worn as you would any other work related outfit. I keep my work scrubs in my dresser and wash them at home.

3

When I was a candy-striper, granted, back in the 1980s, nurses who worked on wards that used scrubs (which would be all wards now, but back then, it was just ICU, CCU, maternity, and ER), bought scrubs of their own, but the hospital also kept some on hand in case you got body fluids on yours, and needed to change. In maternity or the ER, a nurse might need to change three times in one shift.

IIRC, on the ICU and CCU, they put on special gowns over their scrubs in between each patient-- I’m not really sure, because candy-stripers didn’t work those wards.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that in addition to hospitals keeping extras scrubs on hand, nurses keep extras in their lockers.

Probably individual hospitals, or wards on hospitals, have their own policies, but some nursing schools do have the last year students wear scrubs to class, so that may be what you are seeing.

I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with nurses wearing their scrubs from home to work. If they need to be sterile for a particular patient, hospitals have disposable gowns they can put on over their scrubs, and that would be the case even if they wore regular clothes to work, and changed into scrubs when they got there.

4

And they have to change into a new set for each patient, don’t they?

5

The scrubs you see out in public are more like coveralls - like a mechanic might wear to keep grease and whatever from getting in their regular clothes. Nurses get barfed on, peed on, etc…

There are surgical scrubs which are used in a sterile environment - the OR, etc. that are different. Surgical scrubs have long sleeves with cuffs and cover everything. These are different than what you’re thinking of.

6

My wife was a nurse working in a Special Care Baby Unit. When she first started back in the 70s, it was a disciplinary matter to be seen out of the hospital in uniform, even though she always washed them at home (the hospital laundry had a way of losing them).

The rule has gradually fallen by the wayside, and now it is not uncommon to see nurses in uniform doing their shopping.

‘Scrubs’, however would not usually be worn outside theatre, as they are generally pretty flimsy. Premature babies are kept in a warm nursery, so the staff who work with them, often wear scrubs. Because of the heat, they frequently wore very little underneath.

7

Also, just about everyone who works in a hospital wears a set of scrubs these days as a uniform. A lot of the people I’ve seen wearing them in public are not nurses or doctors, but desk workers, kitchen deliverers, cleaning staff.

You may also be seeing people from the veterinary medical side. My coworkers have habits of wearing their scrubs outside too. Different staff wear different colors, some never handle patients. I’ll wear my pants in public, but never my scrub top, as it is emblazoned with the ER logo and when people see it, they start asking me about their pets. Go away!

8

Once had a nurse show up for a date with me in scrubs (we were going to Applebees, so I did say casual). I just mentally shrugged and went with it - don’t remember what we did afterward, althought I’m guessing it wasn’t heading out to a upscale nightclub.

Another date with a different lady, lab tech IIRC, we met up at a Borders (this WAS a while ago) before heading to a nearby Movie Theatre. In her large half open pocket…bag (? This was a pretty large bag) was a plastic intravenous practice arm, similar to this (without the IVs and tubes, of course - maybe they were in her bag also). Again, I mentally shrugged and went with it.

The late 90s were a bit of a bizarre time for me…

9

My wife is in school to be a lab tech. She just wears her scrubs to and from the campus. I’ve also seen plenty of people wearing their scrubs in public. They look comfortable to me.

10

Thanks! They do seem comfortable… I was just wondering about the ‘accidental taking your work home with you’ aspects.

11

There are occasional studies that point to scrubs harboring a variety of germs from the hospital.

See: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44334682/ns/health-infectious_diseases/t/hospital-garb-harbors-nasty-bacteria-new-study-says/

I guess it depends on your level of interaction with infectious patients. Ever since reading those stories, I think it’s a bit gross.

12

I used to work in a medical lab and the rules for us were that you had to have scrubs on to get into the clean room (no street clothes allowed) and then you had to scrub up and add sterile gloves, sterile gown, sterile mask and sterile hood to go into any of the sterile work rooms.

Scrubs weren’t really part of sterile technique, they just insured you were wearing something relatively clean and comfortable under your actual sterile gear.

13

I buy my own scrubs and have a security logo embroidery added by the hospital where I work. (Some folks take issue with this policy thinking that the scrubs personally purchased are ‘ruined’ for work at any other place. That’s true, but I would also prefer to buy scrubs that suit me for fit and style rather than wear a one-type-fits-all style provided by my employer. I am only limited by color when I buy my own.)

The scrubs are color coded- lab wears one color, nurses another, dietary still another, etc.

I don’t like to wear my scrubs in public because I don’t want to be a public example of any particular kind of behavior or to let strangers know where I work.

I wear my scrubs only to work and back and wash them at home. Even thought I’m a floor nurse, I rarely get ‘soiled,’ so ordinary home style washing is perfectly fine. The patient population I work with is generally pretty clean- little urine, vomit, or feces; no infectious disease, etc.

My friend works a ‘messier’ unit and changes both scrubs and shoes in an ante room off her garage and leading to her house. She drops her scrubs into a laundry basket and/or washer she has there. She has shoes exclusively for work that never leave that room.

Occasionally, I take my scrubs to the dry cleaner, but just for pressing more than cleaning.

If I were to get my scrubs dirty at work, I would bundle mine up in a plastic bag and wear some substitutes provided by the hospital. These hospital sets do not have the security tag embroidered on them as they are for internal and temporary use only. Because these scrubs are unlabeled, they are only used in the internal parts of my facility, which is locked. No one, not visitors or physicians, enters the heart of our facility without ID and an ID tag. Without the security embroidery, I may have difficulty performing some aspects of my job such as transporting patients from unit to unit.

Students probably wear them all day- to class and clinical orientations. Surgeons and OR folks probably change between cases. They likely wear a sterile gown on top of their scrubs, in addition. Some other units may put a cloth or paper cover over their scrubs and change the cover between patients or cases depending on the unit and unit policies.

14

Cool! Thanks! BTW, what’s a ‘candy-striper’? I’m thinking an informal entertainer that visits the wards, kind of like a barbershop quartet, but that’s probably way wrong.

15

a volunteer hospital person that could do all sorts of non-medical stuff. name came from the colorful stripped uniform they wore.

16

In the US, there’s a program for high school students to volunteer at hospitals; the uniform has pink and white stripes, so they’re called candy-stripers. They’re about 95% girls, and the usual uniform is a jumper over a white shirt or blouse. Boys get pink and white trousers, and white shirts, albeit, I imagine that by now girls can probably wear trousers as well. You need to be in high school to volunteer for the program, and if you put in enough hours, you can be eligible for a scholarship, should you choose to go to nursing school.

I got a couple of hundred hour pins, but I wasn’t even close to the top volunteers. I really wasn’t seriously thinking about going to nursing school, though; it was just something I wanted to do at the time. A mitzvah, I guess.

We answered the call buzzer at the nurses’ desk, and took care of anything we could; we couldn’t take people their medications, but if they wanted a soda, or something, we could take that, as long as it was on their diet, or an extra blanket. Sometimes they just had questions, like when visiting hours were, or they had dropped something, and weren’t able to pick it up themselves. We ran errands, including things like taking bio-samples to the lab. We also passed out the lunch trays when they arrived from the kitchen, and we changed bed sheets. We also even occasionally took patients in wheelchairs from place to place, or down to discharge.

I did it for a year and two summers, and really enjoyed it.

17

Scrubs are pretty much the required nursing uniform everywhere a nurse would work now. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to buy any other kind of nursing uniform in this country and has been for some time. The last time I could find what used to be standard ‘whites’ at Life Uniform, either dress or pantsuit, was circa 2002. And Life Uniform has since changed their name to Scrubs and Beyond, which tells you something right there.

Not all nurses work in hospitals, and plenty of other professions wear scrubs, too. There are schools, doctor’s offices, clinics, dental offices, etc etc etc. You can buy scrubs in any color you can think of, and with any design you can think of. There are scrubs with holiday themes, scrubs with pink ribbons, there are probably scrubs with smilies. Many hospitals have strict dress codes about what colors and styles are acceptable for which personnel - nurses in one color, lab in another, housekeeping in another, dietary in another, etc. It’s a lot different than it used to be.

18

What they’re saying - “scrubs” are often worn by hospital employees in environments where they may never or only rarely come into contact with anything biohazardous. I knew ophthalmology clinic techs who never dealt with anything involving body fluids other than tears, and they wore scrubs as their uniforms.

People in the OR wear gowns, disposable tyvek “bunny suits”, that sort of thing, and that is the stuff that shouldn’t even leave the OR area.

FWIW, another reservoir of germs in clinics/hospitals is often doctors’ ties. They don’t get properly cleaned very often, but can get touched throughout the day/fall onto patients or contaminated areas, etc.

19

And you can’t wear ties with scrubs.

20

(bolded for emphasis) I don’t think that helped Sunspace’s visual of what might be happening! :stuck_out_tongue: