Beginning in March, registered nurses in University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics' inpatient units and outpatient clinics will have to wear the same color scrubs, according to an Iowa City Press-Citizen report.
The scrubs must be gray tops and black pants, but there are several options for style, according to the report.
According to the report, it's all part of a new professional appearance standard at UIHC in Iowa City, Iowa.
UIHC spokesman Tom Moore told the Iowa City Press-Citizen that the idea for new professional appearance standards came about because of feedback from patients and visitors.
"(Patients and visitors) said they would appreciate being able to identify medical staff more easily," Mr. Moore told the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
According to Mr. Moore, medical staff ID badges were already changed to make their titles more easily visible.
In the future, standards will go into effect for nursing and medical assistants, and nurses in emergency and procedural units already have new standards in place, according to the report.
As for the registered nurses in University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics' inpatient units and outpatient clinics, a majority of them must purchase and wash their own scrubs, officials from Service Employees International Union Local 199 — the union that represents about 2,000 nurses at UIHC — told the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
"(The hospital administrators) have made it very clear that they don't understand how things have been handled differently in each unit," Zach Peterson, the SEIU representative for the UIHC chapter, said in the report. "There certainly is some confusion over what has been done in the past, what is being done currently, and what is and is not a change."
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