From Plain Aprons to Color Coordinated Scrubs - The Evolution of Medical Uniform Style
The patients have come to expect that medical professionals are wearing some sort of scrubs these days. Can you even imagine seeing your doctor in the hospital without being in scrubs? Although one thing that has also changed is that now, non medical people are also wearing scrubs since they are so comfortable and so colorful. One of the biggest advances in all of this is that the people working in the profession are now also much cleaner and more aware of hygiene. It used to be a bloody apron was the sign of an active doctor and may have even been a status symbol. That has changed to wearing a long white lab coat with no blood on it what so ever or a pair of scrubs. As a matter of fact, you'd rather not see the blood, you'd rather see the doctor or nurse wearing something stylish from Dickies scrubs or from Barco scrubs with a little color coordinated look to it. Leave the red in the operating room.
Now they wear a variety of clothes that weren't even thought of back then. Now they wear outfits like cheap nursing scrubs for both male and female to dental scrubs for the dentists and the assistants. Not only do you have a variety of brands from which to choose that includes names like Cherokee scrubs and Dickie scrubs, they come in a vast selection of colors and patterns. They come with cartoon characters on them and quotes from TV shows called of all things, "Scrubs". The profession and their attire have come a long way. You might work in an office where everyone wears the same color scrubs on the same day. You may work in an office where you can wear whatever you want.
When you think about how little clothes have really changed over the past century it's mind boggling how much the attire nurses and doctors wear has. For the most part, clothes are the same as they were a century ago. Pants are pants with the exception of the choice of material from which they are made. The same goes for dresses. They have changed in varying lengths that are the accepted mode of the day, from full length to micro mini and everything in between.
Even that has stayed somewhat consistent with wearing full length to a formal occasion and very short in which to play tennis. The accessories have changed and changed back again and again. This is not the same when it comes to what the medical profession wears. They used to wear street clothes covered with nothing more than an apron, the bloodier the better.