If you are looking for professional
custom alterations, design, sewing, or
embroidery; check out
Donna Trumble's Sewing
Studio.
Donna Trumble
has been a sewing
professional for over thirty years. She
has operated a custom sewing center out of her
home in Georgetown, Texas since
1992.
She is
also an owner of the Temple Sewing And
Supply Inc chain of Sew And Quilt
Stores.
Contact Her
If you need
alterations, custom sewing, embroidery, or
design. You can check out her personal
website at
www.DonnaTrumble.com
ALTERATIONS
CUSTOM SEWING
FORMALS
MENS AND WOMENS
EMBROIDERY
MONOGRAMMING
QUILTING
LOGO DESIGN
DIGITIZING
HOME DECOR
CLOTHING CONSTRUCTION
PERSONALIZATION
Contact:
Donna Trumble
www.DonnaTrumble.com
|
All About
Scrubs
Or A History Of Nursing
Uniforms
Before the 19th Century,
nursing was just another daily chore or duty of
women folk. Whether in the home or in the
street, women have always used their nurturing
dispositions and instinctive nursing and
healing abilities to comfort, and in some cases
cure, the sick and injured.
In the home, women tended
their own children and attended at the births
of other children. In a time before hospitals,
everyone could benefit from some knowledge of
first aid and midwifery.
On the streets, unmarried
women often traveled around poor districts
where families could not afford a doctors house
call, and performed services for free in the
name of the local health facility or the
city.
By the 19th Century, these
nurses wore a servants uniform, with white
gathered or banded cap and a long print dress
with a white apron. Some nurses began to work
for wealthy households, but most nursing, as a
profession, still took to the streets.
Therefore, nursing was not well respected for
some time. The nurses of the age contributed
somewhat to their own ill-repute. Without
families, they often spent nights in their
lodgings or in the hospital basements drinking
and carousing.
By the 1840s district nurses
had become more common, and started to gain
some respect. Somewhat trained nurses who
worked for the city or local health board wore
a more ladylike and sometimes more matronly
version of a servants outfit.
Since it was important for
these newly trained nurses to be recognized on
the street, an outdoor and indoor uniform
system was designed. When the nurses walked the
streets (or rode motorbikes!) in poor
neighborhoods they wore cloaks, coats, and warm
hats, and changed into their pretty white
indoor hats and apron inside.
By 1880, Florence
Nightingales work had turned nursing into a
more reputable occupation, and she established
a schooling system for nurses. They had to have
distinct uniforms to separate them from common
untrained women who acted as aids for the
military or in the few hospitals.
A hat and band system was
devised to identify nurses of different rank.
Depending on the school, a nurse would star
with bands of pink, blue, or other pastel
ribbon, and advance up to a black band of
ribbon. A trainee did not even have a hat until
she passed three months of training. And even
then, her hat could be revoked for poor
behavior, like smoking in the hospital. In the
future, this rank system would help usher the
hats out of uniform chic. The practice of using
them for discipline would eventually be deemed
cruel.
At the turn of the century
the uniform started to get even more
differentiated from servants clothing. The
breast and collar of the dress got more detail
(pockets, button down style top, pointy
collars), a bib covered the torso and gathered
at the waist with an apron below. The fabric of
the main dress was solid. This new tailored
look was in contrast with the formless apron
and dress the common servant wore.
Hats start to show influence
of nuns coifs, which brought the nursing
uniform a borrowed look of respectability. The
two professions merged at times however, and
sister/nurses actually had some of the most
amazingly designed and amazingly huge hats
nursing would ever see.
At the start of the First
World War, functionality became the most
important feature in a nurses uniform. War
brought untold numbers of casualties into the
nurses tents, and care had to be fast and
efficient. Bulky aprons sometimes disappeared
altogether, cleanliness of appearance going by
the wayside. Skirts shortened for better
mobility, and short or rolled up sleeves became
the norm.
The combination of this need
for functionality and the desire to maintain a
feminine look to the uniform produced after the
wars the most familiar, and probably the most
attractive and useful nurses uniform in history
the one we think of when we imagine a
nurse.
Between the World Wars and
in the brief period of prosperity in the 1930s,
nursing fashion began to mimic fashion at
large. Nursing was a popular profession for
females at the time, and magazines and
newspapers were constantly calling for new
recruits. Women had only recently gone into the
workforce in any significant number, and for a
young woman nursing was an attractive and
exciting option compared with, say, typing or
sewing. It was a stable job, and what great
clothes she got to wear!
In the 1950s hats as ranking
identifiers began to be de-emphasized, as it
was believed the system led to low morale among
trainees. The hat was also considered feminine,
and by no longer requiring it the hospitals
hope to attract more male trainees. Uniforms
became less starched and even less complex
bigger hospitals meant more patients and faster
paces and the laundry couldnt keep up. Simple
folded hats and paper hats replaced the
crown-like caps, and more comfortable, less
form fitting designs appeared for the dresses.
Everything had to be wash-and-wear.
By the late 1970s the hat
had disappeared almost completely in the U.S.
The new trend in nursing fashion, scrubs appear
on the scene (for men anyway). Uniforms began
to look more like regular clothing or in some
cases like doctors coats. Hospitals had begun
to employ aids and candy-stripers, and nursing
staff did not wish to appear in uniform as
these untrained staffers were required to
do.
Today the differentiation
between nurses, doctors, staff, etc. is only
denoted by accessories and nametags. At most
U.S. hospitals, everyone wears scrubs at all
times to prevent the spread of infectious
diseases. Doctors wear coats, nurses may
sometimes don a warm-up jacket, but for the
most part, men and women, doctors and support
staff alike are all in some shade or pattern of
loose drawstring pants and v-neck t-shirts. In
Britain, uniforms are more widely used in
nursing, and doctors still wear their own
clothes outside of the OR.
Todays scrubs are available
in hundreds of styles, colors and patterns.
Whether you are a woman who wants a fitted
look, a male nurse who prefers a darker colored
wardrobe than the one his hospital has to
offer, or a nurse who wants to brighten a
patients day with a whimsical pattern, the vast
resources of nursing apparel available on the
internet today are sure to offer even the most
fashionable of nurses everything he or she
needs to create the perfect nursing
wardrobe.
|