Personal choice in dress for emergency nurses.

Abstract

A standardized, uniformed appearance has long been a part of the hospital nurse’s image. Although nursing professionals are generally concerned about the image they project, different interpretations of the dress code have generated problems. At the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Emergency Medicine Center, as at many other emergency departments across the country, some clinical nurses believed that they were being treated like children and resented restrictions on their choice of dress. Challenging the need to wear a uniform, they pointed out that the only other employees with narrow uniform requirements at our institution were the cleaning staff. Other clinical nurses enjoyed uniform dress for reasons of convenience and decreased expense. They also felt proud of the traditional image of nurses in uniform-a symbol they had worked toward and gained respect from. The nurse management group here believed that high standards of professional dress are essential for good public relations but that this belief did not automatically mean that uniforms should be required. In 1982 we decided to reevaluate our existing policy and to examine the possibility of change. We hypothesized that selective use of alternative dress, as long as it was appropriate and professional, would be acceptable to patients and co-workers, as well as to the various nurses involved.