Like other medical institutions across the nation, nurses at Mainland Medical Center paid tribute to National Nurses Week last week by dressing in traditional all-white formal uniforms, complete with the throwback nurses’ caps.

The National Nurses Week logo is developed by the American Nurses Association to help celebrate nurses and all that they do.

“As nurses, we work in emergency rooms, school-based clinics and homeless shelters, to name a few,” the association said in a media release. “We have many roles — from staff nurse to educator to nurse practitioner and nurse researcher — and serve all of them with passion for the profession and with a strong commitment to patient safety."

The Mainland Medical Center nurses said they enjoyed the flashback feel.

“I would wear a cap like they did in the old days if I could,” Monica Montegut, a six-year nursing veteran said.

This spring, spotting a nurse in Nova Scotia is about to get a whole lot easier thanks to the roll out of new, standardized uniforms. Nurses in acute care institutions across the province have already started wearing their new uniform of white tops and black bottoms, and more are following suit, every day.

In 2011, the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union negotiated a distinctive uniform for its members as part of collective bargaining. Now that all the details have been ironed out, the practical and easily-recognizable uniforms are arriving in nurses’ hands.

“Patients and their families should be able to easily identify who is providing their care,” said Janet Hazelton, NSNU president. “With the number of people coming and going in scrubs these days, we felt it would be helpful if our member nurses in acute care could be more easily seen.”

Nova Scotians support this move. In research conducted earlier this year, 74 per cent of those surveyed agreed it would be less confusing for patients if nurses wore a distinct uniform. And 82 per cent of those who supported the introduction of uniforms did so because they believe it’s hard to tell nurses from other members of the health care team.

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Scruby's Uniform Boutique in Pensacola, FL is the creation of owners Todd and Kristen Dixon.

"We wanted to offer a selection of brands, in a boutique setting, for the medical professional with an eye for style and the desire for individuality, while maintaining the need for function," Todd Dixon said. The decor is definitely boutique, with one of the dressing rooms designed with paper flower pendant lighting, a floor-to-ceiling satin curtain and a leaning floor mirror.

The 2,200-square-foot store offers medical uniforms for men and women in sizes from extra small to 5X. Brands of scrubs include Koi, Wink, Med Couture, Peaches, Peaches Sport, White Cross, Ecko and Carrhart.

Scruby's also has an inventory of Alegria shoes, and fashion socks.

School uniforms for children in elementary to high school also are available.

The boutique also carries medical accessories such as stethoscopes, nurse pens, lanyards, key and ID tags, eartips and a selection of instruments.

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Uniforms and scrubs no longer used by Adena Health System nurses have found a new use in the Philippines, inside the San Juan Medical Hospital, which serves some of the poorest people in that country.

Christina Cain, a registered nurse on the Adena Medical Center's 3A Medical-Surgical Unit conducted a "scrubs drive" earlier this year and last month hand-delivered more than 100 scrubs and uniforms to the hospital staff in Manila.

"Nice nursing uniforms are considered a luxury that too few can afford," said Cain, who also volunteered for a week inside the bustling metropolitan hospital.

"The average wage of a Philippine RN, with a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing degree, is close to the minimum wage in the U.S.," she said, which prevents most nurses from purchasing new uniforms or scrubs.

Cain was invited to participate in "Operation We Care," which is part of the Philippines Medical Mission, by Dr. Mel Simon, the Medical Director of Health Services at the University of Rio Grande where she is a BSN student.

She learned that many of those who volunteer for the mission also take used uniforms with them as a gift for the nurses in Philippines. Cain decided to take the gesture a step further, especially since Adena adopted a nursing uniform policy this year that restricts the color and style of uniforms.

Police officers carry a badge. Carpenters have a tool belt. Doctors have stethoscopes. Children putting together Halloween costumes intuitively understand that certain objects symbolize certain professions. But in the case of the stethoscope, is actual use declining?

"Physicians do carry stethoscopes and it certainly is a badge that shows they are a physician, but the sad thing is a large percentage of them don't know how to use it and use it improperly when they do," said Michael Criley, MD, professor emeritus of medicine and radiological sciences and the University of California, Los Angeles' David Geffen School of Medicine in an interview.

Criley sees bedside auscultation, or simply listening to a patient's heart, as a lost art in modern medicine. Rather than emphasize the physical examination, physicians are quick to turn to imaging to provide the answer to any diagnostic question.

"When two-dimensional echocardiography became available in the mid-1970s it could have, and should have, provided a noninvasive way of seeing what the heart chambers and valves were doing when extra sounds or murmurs were created, but instead replaced bedside auscultation," said Criley.

Mayo Clinic leaders in Rochester might need to do some fence mending.

It doesn't matter who's right or wrong. Feelings have been hurt.

Mayo has consistently ranked among the best companies in the United States to work for. Yet the seemingly mundane can trouble even Mayo.

A recent announcement says about 900 desk employees will be required to get new uniforms, a Mayo spokesman said. Clinical assistants (who perform tasks like helping patients in the restroom) and desk staff will order on credit, switching from scrubs to black pants with light-blue shirts.

A Mayo Q&A says they'll repay up to $400 per worker for the cost of the uniforms over the course of up to two years.

The decision, based on months of planning by a committee, triggered a firestorm of online comments from Mayo workers (the Post-Bulletin reviewed two weeks' worth).

"Mayo is a great place to work ... with great wages and benefits," one said on an internal Mayo communication site. "It just seems like none of our opinions matter."

"You'd be a fool if you didn't use your looks to your advantage and make the most with what you've got" was what Ken Siegel, a management psychologist, said in an article ¹ published in 2007 at MSNBC to react on the notion that people's perception on whether a person looks good or not really affects many aspects and cultures in the workplace.

This and many other studies on the same issue motivated Pulse Uniform to eventually conceptualize an idea to help their base of clients look good with the product they buy from the said company. As an apparel industry that sells various brands of nursing scrubs like Cherokee, Dickies, Barco, and many others, giving uniforms ideas to customers is really a market breakthrough. This year, the company unveils an innovative concept: The Nursing Scrubs Uniform Stylist.

"Returns we receive everyday that are due to sizing concerns and color mismatch is a major setback in an industry like ours. We don't blame our customers for choosing what do not really fit on them but we can always make a way to lower returns by giving them advice about what nursing scrubs would look good on them, would perfectly fit their body structure, and what would rightly fall under their budget," Rick, VP for Marketing, said about the new concept. "We want to give our customer ideas on what brands they need to wear, on whether cartoon scrubs would be better to wear than Cherokee workwear scrubs or the Dickies hip flip," he added.

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The use of Vestex fluid barrier / antimicrobial impregnated scrubs combined with good hand hygiene reduces the burden of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) on a new class of health care worker apparel and may play a role in decreasing the risk of MRSA transmission to patients, according to a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) researchers.

Numerous studies last year confirmed the presence of high amounts of bacteria on healthcare worker attire. An Orlando company, Vestagen Technical Textiles, is addressing the issue by developing and marketing a new class of healthcare uniforms: Active Barrier Protective Apparel.

Led by Gonzalo Bearman, M.D.,M.P.H., associate professor of internal medicine in the VCU School of Medicine and associate hospital epidemiologist at the VCU Medical Center, the study "A Crossover Trial of Antimicrobial Scrubs to Reduce Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Burden on Healthcare Worker Apparel," is currently available online and will appear in the March issue of the Journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the official publication of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

According to Bearman's research, the Vestex fluid barrier / antimicrobial scrubs had a statistically significant reduction, greater than a 99.99% reduction, in the overall amount of MRSA on the Vestex scrubs compared to normal scrubs. The Vestex Active Barrier Protective scrub uniforms tested in the study are manufactured by Vestagen Technical Textiles.

The use of antimicrobial impregnated scrubs combined with good hand hygiene is effective in reducing the burden of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) on health care workers' apparel and may potentially play a role in decreasing the risk of MRSA transmission to patients, according to a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University researchers.

Previous findings have shown that hospital textiles may contribute to the transmission of pathogens through indirect contact via the hands of hospital staff and that antimicrobial textiles may reduce the bioburden, or the number of bacteria living on a surface before sterilization in clinical settings.

Led by Gonzalo Bearman, M.D.,M.P.H., associate professor of internal medicine in the VCU School of Medicine and associate hospital epidemiologist at the VCU Medical Center, the study "A Crossover Trial of Antimicrobial Scrubs to Reduce Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Burden on Healthcare Worker Apparel," is currently available online and will appear in the March issue of the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the official publication of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

"We strive to study infection prevention interventions that are simple yet effective for the reduction of health care associated infections," said Bearman. "The goal is to affect change or implement risk reduction by methods that are both easily implemented and sustained."

In the study, 32 health care workers wore four pairs of identically appearing control scrubs and study scrubs impregnated with an antimicrobial, or germ-killing, compound over the course of four months, washing them regularly. Participants also received identical hand hygiene educational sessions every four weeks, and researchers assessed compliance with hand hygiene practices.

It's "out with the old and in with the new" at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan.

Nurses and other caregivers are sporting new solid-colored uniforms these days--- but that doesn't mean the old ones are going to waste.

They're holding a Scrub Donation Drive to help stock the Career Closet at the Women's Resource Center of Mid-Michigan.

"They help women who don't have enough clothing for jobs and interviews", says Registered Nurse Stephanie Prosser. "They tell us scrubs and health care clothing were something they never have enough of, so the timing was perfect to put together a scrub drive to donate the scrubs we're no longer using."

If you have scrubs you'd like to donate, email Stephanie Prosser at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to find out how to contribute.