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What is consensus for attire/footwear in clerkship? I must admit a bias towards dressing up rather than down, but so far it seems like the niceness of dress should be inversely related to risk of a mess - so what specialties outside of surgery/ob/EM carry the most risk of getting dirty? Things like MTU, peds, cards, gi, psych, path, outpatient clinic etc. Maybe it would be fun to rank specialties based on how messy they are lol.

 

Thanks!

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What is consensus for attire/footwear in clerkship? I must admit a bias towards dressing up rather than down, but so far it seems like the niceness of dress should be inversely related to risk of a mess - so what specialties outside of surgery/ob/EM carry the most risk of getting dirty? Things like MTU, peds, cards, gi, psych, path, outpatient clinic etc. Maybe it would be fun to rank specialties based on how messy they are lol.

 

Thanks!

 

You wear nice clothes for almost all outpatient clinics.

 

In hospitals, I wore nice clothes for psych, medicine/peds and their subspecialties (when not on call). 

 

Essentially if you don't wear scrubs I would dress nice.  The above response isn't really true in my experience.  Granted I am a neuro resident so its pretty non-procedural, but I dress nice in all outpatient clinics, and in hospital except when I'm on call

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You must be a surgery resident lol

Back to the OP, for EM, gen surg and obs gyn, everyone wears green scrubs. So don't worry about attire for those rotations. In gen surg, when I am assigned to outpatient clinics in the PM, I show up in green scrub anyway, because I am too tired to change for half-day, and I am on call that evening. 

I did notice however, for gen surg and obs gyn outpatients, the staff shows up in professional attire (suits)

 

For all the other core rotations, yes, dress up professional

Anything in the hospital is filthy and disgusting.

Honestly, all hospitals should ban outside clothes for staff. Scrubs for everyone.

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You must be a surgery resident lol

Back to the OP, for EM, gen surg and obs gyn, everyone wears green scrubs. So don't worry about attire for those rotations. In gen surg, when I am assigned to outpatient clinics in the PM, I show up in green scrub anyway, because I am too tired to change for half-day, and I am on call that evening. 

I did notice however, for gen surg and obs gyn outpatients, the staff shows up in professional attire (suits)

 

For all the other core rotations, yes, dress up professional

 

 

full suits? Wow - usually I have just seen business casual or at worst a tie. 

 

There are some arguments to be made that just for avoiding infection etc scrubs is not a bad way to go. Most people won't clean a suit for instance after every use :) 

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It always did seem backwards to me that we risk contamination with formal clothing, instead of establishing scrubs as formal attire in the eyes of the public.

Scrubs are win-win in terms of comfort and hygiene...we succeeded in moving away from ties for the sake of hygiene, we can do the same with the rest of the getup.

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It always did seem backwards to me that we risk contamination with formal clothing, instead of establishing scrubs as formal attire in the eyes of the public.

Scrubs are win-win in terms of comfort and hygiene...we succeeded in moving away from ties for the sake of hygiene, we can do the same with the rest of the getup.

 

ha - except they are freezing. I mean they aren't exactly warm clothing. At best they are flimsy pajamas.  

 

and as a other reason that isn't all that valid - everyone else is also wearing scrubs. There are advantages to clearly being the doctor at times on a service. 

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ha - except they are freezing. I mean they aren't exactly warm clothing. At best they are flimsy pajamas.

 

and as a other reason that isn't all that valid - everyone else is also wearing scrubs. There are advantages to clearly being the doctor at times on a service.

Yup. As a small female, if I wore scrubs all the time, I'd 1) be freezing 24/7 (and I yawn when I'm cold which makes people think I'm bored) 2) get assumed to be a nurse even more than I already do. Love nurses, but the amount of times I got asked from extra pillows in emerg by patients who weren't even mine... Or to make their IV pumps stop beeping. (9/10 times I don't know how, the other 1/10 I won't do it anyways because the nurse would be mad!!)
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You could solve some of the coldness with an undershirt provided you weren't in the OR.

 

done that - still not enough :) Not even close.

 

anything more than that and it starts to get ridiculous. 

 

There are also times I have to go outside of the building to get to a disconnected one, or travel to another hospital during my day. In Ottawa during the winter ha. I usually am wear a sweater on top of regular business causal to/at work most days. In scrubs?

 

I could wear perhaps a white coat over srubs - but now we are at the same problem we started with as no one is washing their brilliantly white coat daily so you have a potential source of infection. 

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done that - still not enough :) Not even close.

 

anything more than that and it starts to get ridiculous.

 

There are also times I have to go outside of the building to get to a disconnected one, or travel to another hospital during my day. In Ottawa during the winter ha. I usually am where a sweater on top of regular business causal to/at work most days. In scrubs?

 

I could wear perhaps a white coat over srubs - but now we are at the same problem we started with as no one is washing their brilliantly white coat daily so you have a potential source of infection.

Maybe try fattening up for winter like a bear?

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Yup. As a small female, if I wore scrubs all the time, I'd 1) be freezing 24/7 (and I yawn when I'm cold which makes people think I'm bored) 2) get assumed to be a nurse even more than I already do. Love nurses, but the amount of times I got asked from extra pillows in emerg by patients who weren't even mine... Or to make their IV pumps stop beeping. (9/10 times I don't know how, the other 1/10 I won't do it anyways because the nurse would be mad!!)

 

This happens to me no matter what I wear.  I swear to God if I wore a shirt saying "I'm a doctor" and got a forehead tattoo of my medical degree people would still mistake me for a nurse fifteen times a day.

 

Also, scrubs here are so indecent.  The neckline is so low that if I'm not wearing layers underneath, everybody can see my everything.

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This happens to me no matter what I wear.  I swear to God if I wore a shirt saying "I'm a doctor" and got a forehead tattoo of my medical degree people would still mistake me for a nurse fifteen times a day.

 

Also, scrubs here are so indecent.  The neckline is so low that if I'm not wearing layers underneath, everybody can see my everything.

 

never understood that - even from a functionality point of view it doesn't work for either a guy or girl. The point of scrubs is to cover things in case there are "fluids" etc. A low neck line doesn't do that. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

scrubs 4 lyfe. outpatient, inpatient, clinic, hospital ward.

 

the most intriguing paradox in medicine is, why do we isolate MRSA in inpatients but totally go all over them without gown if they come as an outpatient (in the same hospital).

 

i'm pretty sure i carry MRSA, and so do my 'nice' clothes.

 

hence

 

scrubs 4 lyfe

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