We often see in movies prisoners wearing blue uniforms, a set of pants and a shirt. Shirts are sometimes long-sleeved, sleeveless, or just the regular sort. Do you know that the design of these uniforms of detainees was taken from the uniform of nurses which are also called scrubs? Yes they are.
Before the 20th century, hospitals started to assign a set of uniform for their nurses and this came in the appearance of a white shirt and white pants. The main purpose of white uniforms is to promote cleanliness inside hospitals. Later in history the color white has evolved into dark green or dark blue colored garments for some reasons. The design of the uniform became popular because of its cheapness, being easy to wash, being lightweight and breathable, and being easy to repair when damaged. Because of that, prisons in America started to mandate it as the official uniform of inmates.
The medical scrubs used by hospital personnel today have different color patterns. Originally distributed in color white, these medical uniforms have first evolved to color dark green because it is said that when surgeons and nurses in the operating room were at work, the combination of the white paint inside the room, the white uniforms, and the bright lights didn’t make a very good contrast, thus, giving them eye strains after an operation. It has also caused them to lose focus when great attention was needed in a procedure.
Medical uniforms we see in hospitals today vary in more different colors. Aside from the traditional white and dark green, there are also light blue, light green, and even pink. Hospitals also often outsource to another company the task of producing, washing, and/or repairing medical scrubs to maximize the security of cleanliness and sanitation.
Scrub colors may also vary inside a hospital depending on what department or what is the role of a person or group inside the hospital is. Since patients are also required to wear sanitary scrubs today, of course the color of their outfit is different from what the nurses, the doctors, the surgeons, the janitor, etc. wear. Some hospitals exclusive for children have seen issuing uniforms to their staff with cheerful cartoon characters printed on front and/or back of the shirts for an obvious purpose to entertain young patients.
Scrubs may vary greatly in style and appearance depending on which country it is being made from. For example, in European countries like Greece and Rome, hospital scrubs may look more like tunics. And since modern fashion is open to almost anything, the medical scrub design has also affected different clothing designs in one way or another. One popular type of clothing where the scrub design was applied to is the pajamas which people usually use when they are inside their homes or they are about to sleep at night. The working clothes familiarly called ‘overall’ was somehow designed from medical scrubs. The newest additional garment that people add to the typical scrub uniform set is what they call scrub caps.