Scrubs: Pajamas for the Industrious

Scrubs are a marker in our society for anyone in the medical profession. They're used in TV shows and movies usually to tell you that 1. Someone is a doctor and 2. They can get naked in less than a minute. In reality, scrubs aren't worn by all doctors. They are worn by emergency medicine doctors, surgeons, OBGYNs, and any doctor on call. Just when they started to seem really cool, I found out they're also worn in some prisons. Nothing like prison to flip a status symbol on its head. It turns out scrubs tell you nothing about a person.

Back in the day, as in the days when surgeons used string off the floor to put people back together, there were no scrubs. They wore work clothes and butchers aprons, which was actually fairly accurate. They were academics attempting to save lives via butchery.

Scrubs became popular around the time surgeons stopped picking stuff up off the floor in an attempt to be “sterile.” Today, clearly, scrubs are not sterile, but they don't have to be because anytime something needs to be sterile we wear gowns on top. The beauty of scrubs is in their functionality. They're cheap, simple, reversible,"fit" everyone, and the hospital does your laundry for you. And they really do feel like the most comfortable pajamas in the world.

The actual scrubs we wear now are different colors depending on the hospital and the specialty. I’m only half way through the year and I have green, blue, and aqua. Now when I’m feeling a little 80s nostalgia, I can mix the pastel to neon colors. Black is reserved for only neurosurgeons because they’re just that hard core. And that one GI doc who does colonoscopies all day. No one’s really sure about that one.

Hypothetically, everyone shows up to work in their civilian clothes, gets clean scrubs from the machine, changes in the locker room, goes to work, changes into normal clothes, returns their scrubs, and goes home. Also, hypothetically the machine dispenses your size (except the time I got a large instead of a small and looked like CindyLoHoo all day).

All of that is sometimes my plan, just like waking up half an hour to go for a run is. Usually though, I wake up at home, throw clean scrubs on, and run to the bus instead. At work I exchange my scrubs from the day before for new ones, meaning for most of my surgery rotation I haven’t gotten dressed or done laundry. This is a huge draw for me. I know some people like the freedom to express themselves by picking out their clothes, but I give up that right happily for a v-neck and drawstring pants.

In her book “The Funny Thing Is….” Ellen Degeneres says, “Sometimes, when I’m trying to get dressed, I find myself just staring at my clothes for an hour. I have not a clue as to what I should put on. It is so hard to decide what to wear. And it got me thinking: That’s why prison wouldn’t be so bad.” Thank God no one told Ellen she could wear pajamas all day everyday if she went into medicine because she wouldn’t have become the amazing comedian she is today and I would be bored in a call room in my scrubs.