Nursing Uniforms

[Dixie_Amazon]

Where my friend works scrubs are color coded depending on you position. She has to wear burgundy scrubs and hates them.

[Gingerella72]

Pardon the input of a guy here...

One aspect of nursing attire that hasn't changed since Victorian times is the traditional nurse's watch. The little ones that are pinned to her blouse and hang down over her chest, upside-down.

A lot of nurses still wear them. And modern health-and-safety codes actually encourage it. Minimal contact with the watch means that it's harder to spread germs, and germs don't get to hitch a ride on a wristwatch strap instead. So they're actually pretty hygienic.

Before my grandmother died, I used to visit her in the home all the time. The nurses there still wore the old-fashioned nurse-watches. And many still do. It hasn't changed in over 100 years.

If that ain't vintage, I dunno what is!

That must be an Australian thing, I've never seen nurses wearing those here. Not that it isn't cool!

[Dorota]

As for the nurses' watches, they weren't necessarily pinned to the uniform type - so far as I'm aware good few of them, at least in UK in 40's were just regular wrist watches, private purchase ones with central seconds hand. There's a quote from Evelyn Prentis' memoirs 'A Nurse in Time', describing the author's search for the right watch before she started her training. Apparently, there weren't any in her local shop: 'They were all very large and made to be threaded on a chain and slung across the abdomen. In spite of the fact that they had the second hand the list had made such a point of mentioning, I clearly needed a watch that encircled my wrist'
There's as well a couple of images of wartime nurses on duty, wearing wristwatches:



Nurse Molly Budge, QA, Egypt 1941. Picture taken from 'Sister in Arms. British Army Nurses Tell Their Story' by Nicola Tyrer


A QA nurse in British Military Hospital, Singapore, 1945. Picture from 'Sub Cruce Candida. A celebration of one hundred years of Army Nursing 1902-2002' by Colonel Eric Gruber von Arni


A QA nurse, WWII. Picture from 'Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps' by Juliett Piggott


Red Cross VAD. Picture from 'Nurses at War. Women on the Frontline 1939-45' by Penny Starns
But yes, the hanging watches were in use as well, here's a nice vintage Timex of that kind.

[Bingles]

I'm sure not all nurses wore that style as shown above, but they were practical for nurses - which is where they get their names because they didn't come in contact with the hands - and would not get dirty or in the way. My grandmother used to wear one as well when she first started working - and while there were no regulations against wrist watches, many of her co workers also wore them -- she used to tell me all the things a nurse had to clean up - and she certainly didn't want any of that stuck in a watch and bring it home. haha!