Delaware nurses donate thousands of scrubs

Thousands of scrubs have been donated at Christiana and Wilmington Hospitals, as nursing staffs change over to wearing a unified scrub color depending on their jobs.

Starting at the beginning of March, nurses and patient care technicians will make the transition from wearing various colored scrubs to work, to all wearing the same color.  Nurses at the two hospitals are now wearing blue scrubs, while tech staff wear gray scrubs.

The change is designed to help patients clearly identify who is in their room providing care.  “Patients are having a little bit of difficulty determining who is coming into my room,” says Ruth Morse, director of nursing resources at Christiana Care.  “Even though we have our name tags and it’s clearly identified, if patients are on medications they might not know.”  The unified look is also designed to increase the staff’s professional image.

And now that hundreds of nurses and technicians don’t have any need for their closet-full supply of colorful scrubs, the uniforms are being collected and will be donated.  “So far we’ve collected over 2,000 sets of scrubs,” says Morse.  “Those scrubs will be going to the Medical Missionaries, which is a nonprofit organization that will deliver these scrubs to underprivileged and under-served countries to help the health care providers there.”

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