Hospital frontline staff Uniforms Q

There is no set HSE policy on this, though individual hospitals often will have something.

There is a pretty severe lack of changing facilities in many of our hospitals, so you will find that even if a policy exists, its isn't always implemented.

For what its worth, lots of academic research shows that it makes feck all difference from an infection control point of view, as more often than not, there are so many other people coming and going on a daily basis, that having only one group of workers adhering to such a policy is moot.

It has been shown though, that if you apply such a policy to pretty much all the staff in a hospital (like scrubs for everyone) then you can see a difference.

More often than not though, if this sort of thing is of concern, its more useful to look at the non-clinical visitors to a hospital ward tbh.

Lastly, even if you had all the good stuff - there is simply no substitute for good hand hygiene and internal infection control practice

Stingray wrote: »

Where?

Why is this element so important? This is a discussion forum, not an information service tbh

i'm just interested to know why you want to know?

Forgive me for being interested as to why someone who has never posted here before, and barely posts on the whole site in the 8 years since signing up wants to know specifically which hospitals would have such a policy.

Have you maybe seen something a bit dodge going on?

I'm nearly sure that the hospital I work in enforces this no uniforms outside of work policy but will double check tomorrow

Hold on a sec... you asked me why I was interested in your question, I told you. I honestly don't care how many posts someone has tbh. There are loads of forums here that I don't post in, but read pretty often. I was interested as tbh it's a pretty random question.

I did point out above, that most individual hospitals do have a uniform policy, but that the HSE as a whole doesn't. I also pointed out the deficiencies in the system at present, i.e. lack of changing facilities, lack of proof that wearing a uniform outside the hospital has any effect on infection control, and a suggestion that a "uniform" for all staff can make a difference. I don't see any suppression there tbh.

As for the something dodgey I was alluding to, I'm talking about something inappropriate that maybe you had seen. For example, I once say a student nurse, on the ground under their car, just before walking onto the ward to work for the day. I didn't feel that was cool at all, so we got him some scrubs for the day. That sort of thing is what I'm getting at.

A Neurotic wrote: »

On a related note, I've been wondering - is there any good reason doctors don't wear uniforms? Seems like every single other type of hospital staff does.

Only recently enough that Dieticians started wearing tunics as far as I know. (well last hospital I was in was first that I saw this). Pharmacists don't wear a uniform either.