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Depending on the situation, a medical professional in any job may don a pair of nursing scrubs. You know, the pajama-like clothes that the nurses wear all the time?
They’re so comfortable, some even wear them as sleepwear. Blood-stained retired scrubs need not apply.
There is nothing more easy to get into after a long day than a fresh pair of tattered cotton scrubs, especially if one is home from a long shift in soiled, stiff ones.
Like the trend towards mold-injected footwear [think: Crocs], scrubs are perfect and simple. That said, and despite their awesomeness, scrubs have not always been the norm.
Once upon a time, nurses wore so much more [think: nun’s habit].
Thanks to changes in modern social standards of fashion, scrubs are what nurses and other medical professionals get to wear today while earning a living.
Despite the fact that scrubs have been the norm for all most of our lives, they are still quite new compared to the long arc of the medical profession. They are, however, the best uniform one could hope to wear.
Keeping a Habit
When the medical profession was a new science, one only for the dedicated, medical uniforms were everything but… uniform.
Doctors wore whatever they wanted, because who’s gonna tell the only person who can save lives what to do. Nurses, however, wore nun’s habits.
The features of the nun’s habit were so influential, some elements still make appearances in a nurse’s workwear today. The nurse’s cap that once topped the head of every nurse (at least female nurses) is a shortened version of the top portion of a nun’s habit.
So, where’s the connection? Both early eastern and western religions, the Christians, the Islamics, and even the Buddhists influenced the early care of people. The leaders in these ideologies called upon the dedicated to the care for others.
In western Europe, following the edicts of Jesus Christ, early priests functioned in a dual capacity, doctors, and religious leaders.
When Christianity became the official religion of Rome in 325 CE, from that structure arose a system of doctors and nurses. Back then, it was about charity. There were no corporate hospitals.
Care at the time varied, but the first nurses were definitely nuns. Because nuns had a uniform of sorts, evolved from traditional middle-eastern garb, the nun’s habit became the unofficial-official workwear of nurses.
The uniformity, outside of a head covering and robe-like garment, varied quite a bit during the common era. It wasn’t until the 19th century that nurses started to break away from the habit.
Unless they were in surgery, doctors still wore whatever the heck they wanted.
A Bloody War
Most historians credit one nurse in particular for influencing modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.
She was an English woman, born into a wealthy family who rose to fame during the Victorian era for her dedication during the (very bloody) Crimean War. That was 1854.
At that time, she managed a team of 38 nurses, who worked tirelessly to save soldier’s lives.
The legends around Nightingale ‘s efforts extend beyond the believable, but we’ll not go down that path in this blog. Rest assured, she was influential.
In 1860, Nightingale opened a nursing school, which established standards for nurses. She also started the conversation about sanitary conditions in medical facilities.
Nurses of that era still wore something like a nun’s habit, but the practice started to break away from religious roots. Nightingale was at the helm of that break.
White as Snow
Around the turn of the century, nursing uniforms in Europe and the United States went all white. They were still similar to the nurse’s habit, long dresses, except for the few men who practiced as medics.
Most men in medicine at that time were doctors or aspiring doctors. They still wore whatever they wanted most of the time. While in surgery, they would throw on an apron.
During the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, doctor’s started wearing white cotton face masks to protect themselves from infection, not unlike what they wear today.
For the first half of the 20th century, everything in hospitals went white. It wasn’t only nurses uniforms. From the bed sheets to the walls, white was the color of choice.
One could easily spot pathogens on white. The first versions of scrubs, in the 1940s, were also white.
Between all the sanitized metal instruments, the white on white, and the improved lighting of modern times created a unique problem.
Doctors of the mid-20th century, still wearing whatever they wanted, found all the light reflection a distraction. Something had to give.
Technicolor
At first, to cut through the glare, hospitals picked blues and greens for operating room scrubs.
These colors still allowed the wearer to identify blood stains over water or other liquids. They reduced eye-strain for the doctors, and finally, hospitals gained a little character without sacrificing their sanitary conditions.
By the 1970s, scrubs boiled down to their simple modern form, short sleeved, v-neck, loose-fitting shirts. Pants were loose too, with drawstring waists to accommodate more sizes.
The long version of the name for these garments was surgical greens, but the casual name stuck better scrubs. The name came from the fact that before surgery, everyone had to scrub-up.
Today
Scrubs are ubiquitous with most medical scenes. Doctors still wear casual clothes in their offices, but most hospitals mandate they wear scrubs in the surgical room.
There, the hospital administration allows no other exposed clothes for sanitary reasons.
Call it comfort, call it wearing the team colors, but in most hospitals today, many of the non-executive support staff wear scrubs. That may include janitors and administrators.
Clinicians in other non-surgical capacities, like dentist’s offices and pediatric care facilities, may don the scrubs because, why not? They are comfy.
Options are far beyond green and blue today. One has the whole rainbow from which to choose. There are even some fun patterns out there.
The sky’s the limit or… well, the company dress code. Corporate dress code dictates options more than anything now. It’s a good thing. A team of people wearing the same style of scrubs helps anxious patients identify who is there to help.
Medical professionals might prefer to wear something more fitted at times or get sick of scrubs, but for work wear, there is nothing more comfortable.
Dangers aside, there isn’t a firefighter out there who would opt to wear scrubs over their flame resistant workwear any day. Scrubs rule.
Sources: scrubsmag.com, jacksonvilleu.com
About the Author
Nick Warrick
Nick Warrick is the Sales Manager at All Seasons Uniforms. With over 15 years of experience in the work uniform business, he has worked with hundreds of clients across 20 different industries. Holding bachelor’s degrees in both Business Administration and Information Technology, Nick revamped the company’s online presence, offering its customers a new uniform shopping experience.