re: Why do hospital workers feel it's OK to wear scrubs to a restaurant?

No locker rooms. We have a lounge with lockers but no changing rooms. And the lockers are very small and only big enough to store your purse in.


Like I said.....if you aren't working in the OR....you wear your scrubs to and from work. They are scrubs you buy yourself and are expected to launder yourself.


Again....if we are doing any cleaning up of a patient or any type of procedure where we think we will get body fluids on us.....we are wearing plastic gowns over our scrubs with gloves.

If we take care of a patient with contagious stuff.....we are usually wearing a gown and gloves and mask (depending on what they have) so we aren't getting germs on us and spreading it around.


If we somehow do get bodily fluids on our scrubs.....we call the nursing supervisor and they give us these disposable paper scrubs to wear the rest of our shift and we place out scrubs in a plastic bag and take home to wash(hospital will not was your scrubs for you). If it was a lot of bodily fluids on them or the patient actually had something infectious....I would likely just toss them and buy more (even though a set of scrubs costs about $50 on up).

If a baby threw up all over my scrub top....I would bring the top home(sealed in a plastic bag and the vomit wiped off with disinfectant wipes at work) and wash separately in hot water.

Doesn't get better than wearing scrubs everyday. Never have to worry about what to wear and they are always comfortable.

Hell sometimes they're on call. Doctors gotta eat too. This thread reeks of jealousy. I see Little League teams of 20 kids come into chain restaurants with their muddy uniforms and cleats on, all the time. Where's the thread on that?

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Why does everybody in a medical office wear scrubs? I mean from the receptionist to the file clerk?

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The answer is multifactorial:

Scrubs are/were an identified uniform of certain medical professionals, allowing an easy transition to scrubs being used as the default medical uniform.

Scrubs are comfortable, multi-size, generic, non form-fitting, unisex, utilitarian, durable, cheap, and modestly covering garments. This makes mandating uniformity easy and reduces the need for constantly policing less clearly defined expected dress codes in the office.

The fact that one or two extra pair of scrubs in an office is sufficient to provide an emergency clothing change in the event of contamination simplifies things for staff and employers.

For various reasons many medical office workers are young females.

For various reasons many staff members now cross cover various duties despite variances in training or licensure. When those cross covering appear to be the same, patients believe they are.

Due to cross coverage there are very few positions in a medical office that will not on rare occasion have contamination of their scrubs due to fluids or other. This includes essentially any staff member that has patient contact for any reason.

There is a need for staff members to be visually identified as separate from patients without complication

Companies have arisen that specifically market scrubs to employees which in turn motivates employees to request allowance to wear scrubs daily.

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Pop quiz hot shot - on average what is the most contaminated (based on microbial swabbing) article of clothing for the clinic physician?

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They didn't teach us this. But I would assume a watch, second guess would be tie (if wearing one).



ETA Actually we went in the hospital to practice some exams yesterday, I was the only one who didn't wear a tie (because the clinician is cool about it and said she didn't expect it when it's this hot outside). I was the only one who didnt have to awkwardly deal with tie dangling onto patient when listening to heart sounds. Score one for boats

Tie is correct answer for that reason and because no one ever washes expensive silk ties.

I feel like they're a terrible idea. Something that dangles around and never gets washed.

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Also, surgeons, scrub techs, surgical nurses, etc, all wear sterile gowns that cover basically their entire body. There's absolutely nothing unclean about their clothes underneath.

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Except that those impermeable gowns make you sweat no matter how cold the OR is. But regardless, I've only made it to this post in the thread.

I've worn scrubs out before, but I've never worn them to a place nicer than I would've usually worn jeans and a polo. I also would never wear them out after I had made it to my house. I am guilty of occasionally lounging in the house in my scrubs (if they weren't particularly dirty from work). If they were dirty from work, I changed into a new pair at work before leaving. But even if I'm tired and watching TV in scrubs, if a buddy asks to go grab dinner/drinks, I make sure to change before going out. If I am going from work to meet someone, I don't make it a point to stop at home to change if the place isn't particularly nice. My scrubs usually aren't any dirtier than what someone wears to an office all day. If they are, I change them. But I wouldn't necessarily expect someone from outside the setting that I worked to necessarily understand that.