subject: Good Quality Medical Wear [print this page] Medical wear consists of the shirts and trousers or gowns worn by nurses, surgeons, and other operating room personnel when scrubbing in for surgery. They are designed to be simple with minimal places for dirt to hide, easy to launder, and cheap to replace if damaged or stained irreparably.
Today, medical wear consists of a short-sleeve shirt and pants. It may also include a waist-length long-sleeved jacket with no lapels and stockinet cuffs, known as a warm up jacket. Nearly all patient care personnel wear some form of medical wear while on duty. Support staffers such as custodians and unit clerks also wear medical wear in some facilities and hospitals.
Medical wear worn in surgery is almost always colored solid light green, light blue or a light green-blue shade. Surgical medical wear is rarely owned by the wearer; due to concerns about home laundering and sterility issues, this medical wears is hospital-owned or hospital-leased through a commercial linen service.
Non-surgical medical wear come in a wider variety of colors and patterns, ranging from official issue garments to custom made, whether by commercial uniform companies or by home-sewing using commercially available printed patterns.
Some hospitals use medical wear color to differentiate between patient care departments (i.e. Surgery, Labor and Delivery, Emergency, etc.) or between licensed patient care personnel (nurses, radiological technicians, respiratory and physical therapists, etc), unlicensed assistive personnel, and non-patient care support staff (i.e. portering, dietary, unit clerks, etc.). Hospitals may also extend the practice to differentiate non-staff members/visitors.
In most of Europe, nurses and midwives mostly wear a uniform of tunic and trousers or a dress. Doctors tend to wear street clothes with a white coat except for surgery. In the UK, all NHS hospital trusts have stringent clothing policies, and many of these specifically forbid the wearing of the iconic white coat for medical staff, owing to infection control concerns. This has meant that several hospitals around the UK have opted for medical wear for staff, especially in Accident and Emergency departments.
As an item of casual dress, medical wear has gained acceptance outside of hospitals, for example as pajamas, workout clothing or lounge wear. They are sometimes used by backpackers in an effort to reduce weight load. Large stencils with the hospital's name or logo imprinted on them (commonly on pockets or at knees) are designed to prevent theft due to their increased popularity as casual wear.
Medical wear hats or caps have graduated from being functional to being a personalizable accessory both in the operating room and outside. Before the antiseptic focus of the 40's, medical wear hats were not considered essential to surgery. In the forties and fifties, as a hygienic focus swept the industry, these hats became standard wear to help protect patients from contaminants in hair. These hats have been, and continue to be distributed by Group purchasing organizations who supply hospitals with most equipment.
