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Professional Dress Code Essay

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Presentation of a Nurse: Professional Dress Code Nicole Davis St. Joseph’s College of Nursing Presentation of a Nurse: Professional Dress Code One of the first things a patient sees when a nurse walks into their room is the expression on the nurse’s face and what the nurse is wearing. Everyone thinks of different attire when speaking of nurses: some think of the all-white uniforms with caps that needed to be starched, some may think of a person in scrubs, and few may think of risqué Halloween costumes of nurses. Nursing, unlike many professions, cannot dress in business or business casual every day to show professionalism, instead many hospitals have mandatory dress codes including having nurses wearing scrubs instead. It puts …show more content…

(SJHHC, 2016) Employees should wear scrub tops over their t-shirts as well, which should be either white or the same color as the scrub top. (SJHHC, 2016) All these policies are in place to make the patients aware of who is taking care of them at every given moment. Supporting Literature and Research Throughout many years, nurses have dressed in all white uniforms making these men and women easy to identify. Since switching to theses unstandardized uniforms, nurses no longer have the same message, some even stating that “today’s nonstandard nursing uniforms… do not present a professional image and contribute to the patient, family, and other healthcare provider’s inability to identify the RN among other care providers.” (Hatfield et al., 2013) As years advance though, many policies at hospitals will change and adapt with them. Another article states: “Patients and clinicians want nurses to be able to be rapidly identified, in emergent situations when it is vital to communicate competence and readiness to assume their role in patient stabilization.” (Clavelle, Goodwin, & Tivis, 2013) While these two articles agree that nurses should be easily identifiable, a module from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) states that “Ideally, your attire should enable you to blend in to the professional crowd rather than stand out” but also states to abide by the employee handbook for information

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