One of the nice aspects of my job is that I get to work with nurses from all education backgrounds, from ADN all the way up to PhD.

One colleague in particular will have a PhD, with her focus on nursing history.

Could I get luckier than that?

Not only did she inspire me to go on with my education, but she is a wealth of information on everything nursing.

I had the pleasure of reading one of her papers, written on the history/evolution of the nursing uniform.

Here are some interesting tidbits from that paper:

• Florence Nightengale believed a nursing “uniform” would enhance the nursing image. Nurses had to impart respectability and soberness. To soldiers, a uniform commanded respect and nurses appeared serious about their work. (So would you you if you wore a “…grey tweed dress with matching wool jacket plain white cap and a brown scarf…” embroidered with the hospital’s name. I wonder what Flo would think of SpongeBob Squarepants scrubs.)

• With nursing schools came standardization of uniforms. Early nurses could be identified by the uniform they wore. Each nursing school had a unique style and nurses would wear that same uniform throughout their career. Students of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital School of Nursing (est 1912) could be out of uniform because their collars were so tight they left brown rings on the students’ necks! It wasn’t unusual to see some variation because the uniforms were made by personal dressmakers.

• The classic, all-white uniform was ubiquitous by the 1940s but the reasoning is not clear.  Perhaps it was the new emphasis on germs or maybe wearing all white differentiated the graduate nurse from the probationer or student nurse.  When white leather shoe polish became available, white shoes became the norm.

• Nursing caps (ah, my favorite subject!) began as a way to cover long hair on top of the head. Hairstyles changed and caps were worn farther back on the head.  They also were used as a way to designate status.  As early as the 1930s there was talk of the cap being only for adornment, but it remained part of the traditional uniform until the 1960s.

The biggest changes are yet to come.  Next Monday we’ll look at the turbulent 1960s and the influence of men in what was up until then a female profession!

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Resource: Houweling, L. (2003). A history of the nursing uniform. (pp. 1-14).