FASHION : Doctored Duds : Some hospitals have relaxed their dress codes. But one Simi Valley firm is trying to give medical staffs a new professional look.
I’m not going to go into great detail here, mainly because many of you are probably reading this over breakfast. So suffice it to say that a good friend of mine recently was told she needed a medical test--a nasty one involving a needle and her neck.
She took me along for moral support.
On the way, I got a sketchy profile of the doctor who would be doing the procedure: He was a pathologist, highly recommended by several local doctors and considered top in his field. He’d done this particular test many times, my friend said, which made her feel a lot better. At least she knew she had the best.
I’m not sure what I expected him to look like, or how I thought a doctor of his caliber would behave. Clinical and professional, perhaps, and possibly with a take-charge attitude designed to allay any fears about his competence.
As we walked into the building and into the reception area, whatever image I previously had vanished. Standing in the middle of the room was a lean, immaculately groomed man with silver hair. He wore a green shirt with an open-mouthed alligator on the pocket, tan chinos and deck shoes.
There was not a hint of medical attire: no white lab coat, no stethoscope, no name tag with “M.D.” written anywhere on it. At any moment I expected him to sit down, put his feet up and say, “Please, call me Bob.”
I looked at my friend with soup-bowl eyes. This was the specialist who was going to perform a delicate, invasive procedure? Surely we took a wrong turn somewhere. But then he pulled out a large syringe. I couldn’t watch the rest.
On the way home, I held my tongue. With everything else on my friend’s mind, she certainly didn’t need to hear what was on mine. And besides, so what if the guy looked as if he’d just stepped out of the pages of Senior Golf Attire? Did that mean he didn’t know what he was doing? Or that he didn’t take her case seriously? Did it mean anything at all?
Ken Flanders, president of the Simi Valley-based company, PL of California, seems to think it means quite a lot. Things have changed in the medical profession, he says, and not just in terms of technology.
“A lot of hospitals have relaxed their dress codes over the last few years,” he said. “With the nurses’ shortage somewhat crippling America, nurses are in a position to demand that they don’t want to look like Nurse Nancy any more. A lot of doctors have followed suit.
“We had an employee who was ill last year and went to a local hospital, and I couldn’t believe the staff,” he said. “They were wearing everything and anything.”
This did not make him happy.
“Personally, I’m somewhat offended if I’m paying $60 a visit and the doctor’s attending me in a golf shirt and Dockers,” he said. “I also don’t want a nurse giving me an IV if she looks like she’s coming from the bowling alley. I mean, how confident would you feel if you were flying to New York and the people at the boarding gate were wearing cut-offs, and the captain hadn’t shaved and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt? I’d bail out the door.”
Flanders, of course, has good reason to care about such matters. PL of California, short for “Prescription Labels,” is in the business of making health-care attire. In a non-descript building at the end of a cul-de-sac, the 15-year-old company designs and manufacturers medical clothing that Flanders hopes will meet more than just one need.
“Our clothes have to be functional as well as fashionable,” he said.
So what does the company’s catalogue consider vogue for the needle set?
How about button-front tops in “classic styling, in today’s most sought-after shades.” Or lab coats with pleated, padded shoulders that are “always imitated but never duplicated.” Or one-button white jackets with “slimming sophistication.” Or the season’s new “fashion sensation”: surgical scrubs in colors such as “geranium, raspberry and peacock.”
Somehow, I have a feeling that in hospitals and doctors’ offices where staffs already are wearing casual dress, these fashions probably would be as welcome as face-concealing chodors were to Westernized women in Iran. It’s easy to slip from formality into informality, but rarely so the other way around.
But at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, where a “modified” dress code still is in effect, public relations director Suzanne Brockman thinks there might be a place for the designs. All the nurses still must wear the traditional white on the floor, she said, but they can pick any color scrubs they want to wear in the operating room.
“They found out that people are affected by colors,” Brockman said, adding that the hospital’s same-day surgery room recently was painted a “pleasing” purple. “When the anesthesiologist is doing children,” she added, “his scrubs have balloons and teddy bears on them. The kids aren’t afraid then.”
Possibly.
But wait until they get a glimpse of his deck shoes.
* THE PREMISE
Ventura County is teeming with the fashionable and not so fashionable. There are trend-makers and trend-breakers. There are those with style--personal and off the rack--and those making fashion statements better left unsaid. Twice a month, we’ll be taking a look at fashion in Ventura County--trends, styles and ideas--and asking you what you think. If you have a fashion problem, sighting or suggestion; if you know a fashion success or a fashion victim, let us know. We want to hear from you.
