Identification of nursing staff.

[Nurse79]

Hi All,

I am a Junior Charge Nurse within a paediatric A&E department and I'd like your views on the following question:

How much importance would you place on Charge Nurses and Sisters in all hospital departments to be identifiable by a different uniform from nurses less senior to them?

I look forward to your views.

It may be useful but if your child is sck presumably they are rather sick or being diagnosed. Surly a calm friendly face would be better?

Regardless of union colour.

I think this is very important.

I am a qualified nurse.

There is a worrying trend in hospitals to put everyone, from the charge nurse to the cleaner in similar uniforms.

My personal opinion is that this is a deliberate ploy to fool the public into thinking there are several "nurses" on the ward, when in fact there may only be one actual qualified nurse on the ward.

This leads to all kinds of problems, and causes a great deal of stress for the single qualified person who is responsible for everything, but hasn't enough time to physically do everything.

I think every member of staff should be clearly identifiable, with visible and legible badges showing name and designation.

Incidentally (you can see I am now in full flow) I hate seeing nurses/midwives carrying out procedures on patients with a name badge on a string dangling over the patient's wound or bedpan or whatever. Yuk.

I don't know the nursing structure so being able to identify the different grades of nurses wouldn't be important to me

I would however want it to be obvious who was a nurse/health care assistant/cleaner etc

I am a nurse too and I agree with 3littlefrogs. The trusts I work in tend to work on the basis of 'the darker the blue themore senior nurse'. HCAs in pale blue, staff nurses in mid blue and sisters in navy.

NHS scotland now have a national uniform, with different colours for different grades: here

I think this is a good idea, and its easy for people then to know which staff are about.

My DD was admitted as an emergency following a seizure and all the staff had brightly patterned 'child friendly' tunics on and I had no idea who anyone was. It was all a bit bewildering and frightening and it would have helped enormously if uniforms could have provided a clear signpost as to who the person was and what their role was on the ward (it would have also helped to have been given some idea what was going etc etc but thats a whole different thread!)

Me too, i think its really improtant.
Its an utterly sressful and confusing time, people need to know that they can identify individuals to make the whole situation a little less confusing.

Relatives tend to gravitate toward senior "looking" staff for information and answers.

OP have you tried asking visitors via a simple survey for a month or so? Put a box in the visitors room with questionarries & pens next to it....pens will of course get nicked, but you can replenish every day

Presumably if you are planning on standardising all uniforms, this will have huge cost implications....a big NO NO in my Trust at present.

agree with littlefrogs.
I don't much care about the grading, more about qualifications.

Badges would be good and colours are only helpful if there are posters about to help you know.

From a parental POV with no real knowledge of who does what in hospitals, the colour coding of uniforms is irrelevant if there is no clear indicator of what colour tunic means what. And what the titles actually mean

I'd ditch the uniform completely. Archaic, ugly, poorly made and unnecessary.

Wear some thing comfortable and have a good name badge showing your job role.

And here's a radical idea........

What about introducing yourself by name and role to patients and their families.

I always introduce myself. However, on a busy ward/clinical area it may not always be easy for ill or stressed people to remember who everyone is.

(I frequently forget the names of people I have worked with for years - although this is probably due to "senior moments".)

I like my uniform because I can chuck it in a hot wash at the end of the day.

I don't wear a uniform if I am teaching, or doing some other non-clinical role.

Our local hospital has a display up in peads a and e and on the ward which shows pictures of staff in each different uniform and shows what role they have. It includes everyone from domestics through to senior doctors and as a parents who has spent a lot of time on the wards that has helped me a lot as it makes staff quickly identifiable.

Taggie - of course staff should introduce themselves and in my experience they always do when coming to treat if we don't already know them. However at times as parent you need to go and find a member of staff to help with something and in those cases knowing the member of staff in the pink tabbard is a HCA or the doctor in the green is an SHO that makes it much easier to approach a staff member more likely to be able to help

I would like to be able to identify at a glance people that fit into different qualification bands. I.e. doctors different to qualified nurses different to hca's different to non- medical staff.

I don't care about the difference between sister/senior nurse and nurse (they are both registered nurses right?) But I do care about the difference between a doctor and a nurse or a nurse and a cleaner.

Also agree that should be accompanied with.guidance to the colour code as it isn't consistent. I had always assume the darker the more senior but after 3m visiting a relative (non paeds) I think we were wrong.

I'm not sure it has to be a full coloured uniform either, for paeds being personable is important. I think my local hospital has less formal polo shirts and fleeces with embroided teddies on.