Now it is offensive to have male and female uniforms in the NHS

[SecretShambles]

NHS unveils first 'national uniform' - here's what the colours mean https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12566251/NHS-unveils-national-uniform-bosses-ditch-traditional-male-female-sizes-heres-TWENTY-SEVEN-different-coloured-scrubs-mean.html?ito=native_share_article-top

Despite the fact that male and female bodies are different, every uniformed NHS worker will have to wear a unisex uniform from now on in case of offending the easily offended.

I'm fat but I'm not offended by seeing size 8 clothes on the rail when I go shopping so I'm not sure why having a male body but not identifying as a man and seeing male and female clothing is so very wrong?

I would bet large amounts of money* that "unisex" means "made for men, and non-men will just have to drag them on somehow".
I don't think women need body-con uniforms, but some space for hips and busts (without making it fall off your shoulders) would be nice.

*if I HAD large amounts of money.

NHS staff need uniforms. Their uniforms need replacing from time to time. Changing the uniforms all at the same time may be a big initial expenditure, but in the long term it will only cost the same as the current uniforms.

Gender neutral clothing = default to male.

Invisible Women needs to be mailed to whoever made this decision.

Everything will be standardised.

That means a 5' 2" slim woman with boobs like me will struggle to fit anything and when they do will literally look like they are wearing a sack.

Thank the Lord of Gender for inclusion.

(Fuck off).

Unisex is disappointing. I wore 1980's j-cloths as a student and unisex scrubs are even less flattering and comfortable than those. And I say that as someone who campaigned to be able to wear trousers.

I'm female with hips and breasts. My scrub tops are square and shapeless. I normally wear size 8-10 on tops but need a medium scrub top to be wide enough for my hips. There are no bust darts or waist definition, and the shoulders sit somewhere near my elbows.

I also need medium trousers to get the elasticated waist over my hips. They are then too long from waist to crotch. I can choose between turning them over at the top, imitating a Michelin tyre or leaving them long and letting the crotch seams cause friction burns on my inner thighs.

The NHS employs hundreds of thousands of nurses. Was it really to hard to find uniforms that would be comfortable for female staff?

Information released by the organisation also suggests the smart scrub and dress will have two waist pockets and one breast pocket, while trousers and shorts will have two cargo-style pockets

Mail says smart scrub and dress
So they might be keeping dresses as an option?.

It’s a non issue. Just the usual ill informed hysteria. This was rolled out earlier this year. Although I question the mails source because they have the colours and grades wrong.
There are seperate male and female scrubs. They are ergonomic and easier to work in. I also have a dress as well as scrub uniform.

I wore scrubs on ICU for 20 years, they are comfortable,cool in hot wards, easy to clean and easy to move around in. Much prefer them to a dress which rides up when you were bending down to read drains.
As long as they are shaped for women and not v necked so you flash your boobs every time you lean forward, I have no issues.

The article doesn't say that, there is a bit about this being for the non-gendered items only, and mentions dresses elsewhere in the article.

I do agree that scrubs should be available for women's and men's bodies in women's and men's sizes.

However, OTOH I find that women's fitted T-shirts and the tunics when I used to wear them at work often didn't have enough room for a larger-chested woman and so I lean(ed) towards the smaller sizes of men's/unisex tops and I am not and was not the only one.

I was rather surprised reading the article to discover it isn't centralised. or that the colours arent standard. For some reason I had assumed both of these facts to already be true!

They should be true!

I hate to be a pharmacy person NHS. I look horrible in green.

Unifying the uniforms would save a lot of money

All I really want to know is who are the doctors and consultants.

But they aren't even allocated any colours.

See,we already wear scrubs, unisex only and they are awful, I have to size up so I can fit my boobs in and the trousers don't allow me to have a waist or big thighs (which i do) this means most staff buy their own.

Nursing staff in my trust have different colours depending on grade. So, I wear a dress as it is so much more comfortable than the thick scrubs (they are nowhere near as soft as theatre/ITU scrubs) it has darts at the front and back allowing me to move and bend. Honestly I see people's butt cracks/thongs in the scrubs 😕.

As if anyone pays any notice to what colours the staff are wearing and what they mean???

we had this in a sterile manufacturing site where we had to wear scrubs and it was mostly men, and some stupid idiot of a male manager said we just wear same as men. Women were splitting side seams of tunic as they couldn’t go over hips or gaping cleavage at top and pits because they were enormous at chest to get over hips. Bottoms falling down as waists too large for hip ratio and being told to leave area because we had to use safety pins to keep our pants up or cleavage covered
🙄 never mind tripping over trouser bottoms cos they were also way too long and we weren’t allowed to turn up bottoms . In my case my overly large cup size to waist and hips ratio meant my breasts were flattened and squeezed in.

and add to that the fabric was so cheap, nasty and thin white you could see underwear - I really didn’t enjoy having to look at some blokes polka dot or stripe boxers. The women refused point blank to strip down to undies and got reprimanded , but still refused

they realised eventually that they needed to accommodate women’s shape. And to get fabric that was modest . Who’d have thought 🙄🤷🏼‍♀️

I prefer scrubs, they are rectangular but so much cooler and more comfortable to wear.

I think tunics are better suited to hour glass. To accommodate my post menopausal midriff the size of my tunic is massive across my shoulders with my twiggy arms sticking out.

No one I work with wears the uniform clown trousers.

I thought dresses were bad for infection control. Aren’t staff supposed to have covered legs and closed shoes?

Looks smart

Why would that not happen in a dress?

It’s not an infection control thing but dresses are lousy for manual handling

They can't be that bad, plenty of nurses choose to wear them.

we wear scrubs. they're unisex. which like most other unisex things means they're made for men and most women have to put up with them bring too long and either too tight on the hips or massively flappy around the rest of your lower half.

I realise the picture might not be accurate but if it is then they haven't considered colour blind people at all.

Why does gender neutral = always have to mean 'made for men'?

I'd like to see gender neutral uniform brought in as made for women's bodies with men expected to wear trousers that end several inches above the ankle or with waists they can't get over their beer bellies.

That would soon see an end to the ridiculous idea of forcing everyone to wear clothes designed for one sex only! As if men were the ones complaining, something would be done about it!

Of course, when it's just women who are inconvenienced by this policy, nothing is done and no-one gives a shit.

Speaking as someone who was recently in hospital for a long period as an inpatient, it was absolutely crucial to get to know the colours the staff were wearing and what they mean.

The NHS is very hierarchical and specialised - so if you wanted to get your medications sorted, it was crucial you were speaking to the nurse, because eg a health care assistant wasn't going to know and wouldn't necessarily pass your query on. If you needed someone to eg change your bedding, you would probably mortally offend someone higher up the food chain than a healthcare assistant if you asked them to do this (and they wouldn't do it).

The doctors not wearing any kind of uniform or identifying badge is also a real issue, because often the junior doctors are very young and frankly look no different to a health care assistant (some of them wear scrubs too). But of course it's really important to know if the person giving you medical advice is actually a doctor. IMO, doctors should wear an easily recognisable uniform too. But if course they won't, because they currently get to wear whatever they like (hygiene rules don't seem to apply to doctors for some reason?), and can't see them wanting to change that.