The Evolution Of Nursing Uniforms

Officially, hospitals didn't really exist until the 19th century, so there were no designated uniforms that hospital workers and nurses wore before this time. Instead of going to a hospital, a sick person before the 19th century would have to send for someone to help them, so the nurses of the time would just do house calls for the sick. It was not uncommon for nuns to be the ones that performed these kinds of duties, and so the first kind of uniform nurses were associated with was what they wore. They wore aprons and nurse's caps along with their dresses, which became the standard thing that most nurses wore at that time.

While nurses were not well respected before the 19th century, they finally were respected and became somewhat official in the mid 1800's. Instead of just wearing simple dresses, nurses now wore longer and more respectable dresses, which were kind of like a servant's uniform at the time. As they traveled making their house calls, they were able to wear warmer clothes like coats and cloaks for the journey. However, once they got inside it was back to the normal nursing uniforms, where they put on their apron and white nursing hat.

The late 1800's brought a new formality to nursing, as nursing schools began to pop up. Now, the formally trained nurses had an official uniform to wear when they performed their duties, which separated them from untrained nurses. Nurses were ranked by how their hat would look. Trained nurses wore nursing hats that had different colors on them which signified levels of training, and people were able to choose what nurses they wanted to see based on this information. Also, the hat could be used for other reasons by the schools, such as for discipline if the students had bad behavior. Since the schools were so formal at the time, it was quite an accomplishment to actually get a nursing hat in the first place, and to keep it all the way to graduation took quite a lot of work, but women were able to do it.

In World War I, there were some dramatic changes that were made to the nursing uniform which had lasted since the creation of the nursing schools. The original uniforms were simply not very practical for treating this many wounded people efficiently, so the uniforms had to make some changes. Shorter skirts allowed more mobility, and nurses could get around a battlefield without worrying about tripping over their own dress. Check out scrubs online.

As the 20th century unfolded, men began to get into the nursing industry and because of this the uniform made some obvious changes. The uniform worn today consists of scrubs which are very easy to maintain in a hospital because they are so simple and easy to wash.