Non-traditional industries using scrubs include workout facilities, schools, and restaurants. Outside of hospitals, scrubs are becoming more common in other areas especially in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Scrubs are also sometimes used as prison uniforms in the U.S and other countries. This has meant that several hospitals around the UK have opted for scrubs for staff, especially in Accident and Emergency departments. In England, all NHS hospital trusts have stringent clothing policies, and many of these specifically forbid wearing the iconic white coat for medical staff, owing to infection control concerns. When the physician is not performing surgery, the scrub is often worn under a white coat. Support staff such as custodians and unit clerks also wear scrubs in some facilities. Nearly all patient care personnel at hospitals in the United States wear some form of scrubs while on duty, as do some staffers in doctor, dental, and veterinary offices.ĭoctors in the United States may wear their own clothes with a white coat except for surgery. As scrubs are designed to promote a clean environment, the wearing of outside clothing is thought to introduce unwanted pathogens. In many operating rooms, it is forbidden to wear any exposed clothing, such as a t-shirt, beneath scrubs. This uniform was originally known as "surgical greens" because of its color, but came to be called "scrubs" because it was worn in a "scrubbed" environment.Īmerican hospital workers in Baltimore, Maryland wearing scrubs in 2001 Over this was worn a tie-back or bouffant-style cloth cap, a gauze or synthetic textile mask, a cloth or synthetic surgical gown, latex gloves, and supportive closed-toe shoes.
īy the 1970s, surgical attire had largely reached its modern state-a short-sleeve V-necked shirt and drawstring pants or a short-sleeve calf-length dress, made of a cotton or cotton/ polyester blend. By the 1950s and 1960s, most hospitals had abandoned white operating room apparel in favor of various shades of green, which provided a high-contrast environment, reduced eye fatigue, and made bright red blood splashes less conspicuous. However, the combination of bright operating lights and an all-white environment led to eye strain for the surgeon and staff.
Originally, operating room attire was white to emphasize cleanliness. Instruments, supplies and dressings were routinely sterilized by exposure to either high-pressure steam or ethylene oxide. Around the same time, operating theatre staff began wearing heavy rubber gloves to protect their hands from the solutions used to clean the room and equipment, a practice surgeons grudgingly adopted.īy the 1940s, advances in surgical antisepsis (now called aseptic technique) and the science of wound infection led to the adoption of antiseptic drapes and gowns for operating room use. With the " Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918 and the growing medical interest in Lister's antiseptic theory, some surgeons began wearing cotton gauze masks in surgery however, this was not to protect the patient from intra-operative infection, but to protect the surgeon from the patient's diseases. The importance of dress as a badge of one's class in society was paramount and the processes behind the transmission of infection were the subject of controversy within the profession. In contrast to today's concept of surgery as a profession that emphasizes cleanliness and conscientiousness, up to the early 20th century the mark of a busy and successful surgeon was the profusion of blood and fluids on his/her clothes. (Gut and silk sutures were sold as open strands with reusable hand-threaded needles packing gauze was made of sweepings from the floors of cotton mills.)
The surgeon wore his/her own clothes, with perhaps a butcher's apron to protect his/her clothing from blood stains, and he/she operated bare-handed with non- sterile instruments and supplies. Surgical procedures were conducted in an operating theater. In contrast to the uniforms long required of nurses, surgeons did not wear any kind of specialized garments until well into the 20th century.