A Guide to Nursing Dress Codes

Year after year, nurses continue to rank as the most honest and ethical profession in Gallup polls. Before a nurse can say a word, their uniform symbolizes their honesty, ethics, and training. But many nurses still find nurse dress codes restrictive and hard to follow.

Student nurses and newly licensed registered nurses (RN) have so much to do and think about before they enter a clinical setting. Dress codes for nurses only complicate preparing for clinical practice. You should not have to worry about what you wear on your first day as an RN or in clinical rotations.

Dive into what you need to know about dress codes for clinicals, simulation labs, and your first job after graduation. To create these guidelines, we looked at hospital employee dress code policies from across the U.S.

In the 1800s, as nurses began to receive more recognition and training as professionals, the nursing uniform helped distinguish trained nurses from untrained volunteers. As the years passed, the nursing uniform Florence Nightingale designed changed for improved functionality, easier cleaning, and gender neutrality.

Today, nurses’ uniforms still give a first good impression about nurses’ professionalism, skill, and knowledge. But not all nurses accept their uniforms as a symbol of pride and professionalism.

Nurses want the freedom to express themselves and work in comfortable clothing. Patients want nurses they can easily identify as professional, competent, and knowledgeable.

Healthcare settings side with patients. The guidelines may become less strict at your first registered nurse job than when you were a student nurse doing clinicals or labs. The color of the scrubs you wear may vary based on the facility or department where you work.

However, all healthcare facilities want nurses who:

A dress code for nurses is often based on supporting patient safety, staff safety, infection control, professionalism, cultural competence, and patient satisfaction.

Specific dress code requirements vary based on the setting. A clinical site may have different guidelines than its university partners. The pediatric department floor may have different guidelines than the emergency department.

The following is a list of common clothing requirements for nurses. Nursing students should pay special attention to requirements related to scrubs, jackets, and undergarments. Check with your university or employer’s dress code policy for more specific information.

Compared to the dress code for nursing students, hospitals often take a more casual approach. They lay out guidelines for when to wear professional attire and when to wear scrubs, but many of the other dress code requirements are left to the discretion of the nurses.

Hospitals still want nurses to keep infection control, professionalism, cultural competence, patient satisfaction, patient safety, and their own safety in mind when they dress themselves.

However, hospitals do not get hyper-specific with their dress codes the way dress codes for nursing students do.

If you have clinical rotations or simulations coming up, check both your school of nursing dress code policy and the clinical facility’s policy. They may overlap or differ.

Remember, facilities do not require uniforms because they wish to stifle your personal expression. They make you wear a uniform so patients see you as a knowledgeable, skilled nurse who respects their preferences and opinions.

Underneath all the details and specifics of those policies, nursing schools and clinical facilities care about six things, in no particular order:

If you can think about your appearance in those terms rather than just in terms of your personal preference or expression, you should not have any trouble meeting all dress code requirements for nurses, no matter how complicated they seem.

Page Last Reviewed: September 12, 2022