An Open Letter To The Guy In The Scrubs
As I’ve said before, I love McSweeney’s for all its literary humor and fun. And thus I present:
AN OPEN LETTER TO MY ACROSS-THE-STREET NEIGHBOR WHO ALWAYS DOES HIS YARD WORK IN HIS SCRUBS.
I have a friend at another school whose attending specifically wears scrubs for no reason to Starbucks, hoping women will hit on him, and there are plenty of people who have no reason to be wearing scrubs to the campus gym.
My policy is such: if I’m going to/from work and need to quickly do something in public (like pick up a gallon of milk from the store post-call), I’m not going to make an extra trip home or bring extra clothes for something simple. Otherwise, I want to get the nasty hospital-y stuff off me and slip on some jeans or something.
Graham,
Jump over to my site and take my one-question quiz on scrubs in public. You hit my sore spot. I hope the first-years are as wacky on the west as the east coast.
.. Unless you’re trying to pick up women, of course.
While he was on neurosurgery my roomate would walk home every day (about a mile from school through residential neighborhoods) with full on scrubs, white coat, and would even leave his paper surgical hat on too. It took about a week of ridicule to make him stop, he would talk loudly on his cell phone as he walked home making himself look like someone from the psych ward.
Honestly, I came to class Mon/Wed/Fri in regular clothes, changed into scrubs after lecture, went to anatomy lab at 1pm, smelled terrible, changed back and went home.
Then I realized, if I wear scrubs on Mon/Wed/Fri for the whole day I:
1: Don’t have to change twice
2: Don’t have to be smelly in my regular clothes
3: Have almost half as much laundry to do each week
and 4: Only stand a little ridicule because hey I have anatomy lab coming up.
Honestly, I like clean scrubs, they are comfy, and since I’m not doing the laundry I could care less how dirty I get them. They make great rags.
They may or may not “look cool” but I’m just a lazy scrub. *bad pun*
my personal fave are the folks with their stethoscopes around their necks at the subway station!
Hey, do us a favor and leave your hospital germs in the locker room. Scrubs may be comfortable, but so are pajamas. Maybe we all ought to get something with cute little bears on the front and elastic waistbands. The new business casual. After hours of contact with all sorts of nasty bugs, take a minute to change and wear clean jammies home.
there was a MRSA scare in New Haven, and soon after signs were posted all over the yale med school gym: “Do not wear your scrubs while exercising.”
i suppose they’ll demand that i stop wearing my scrubs to bed too. administration always ruins the fun…
If I recall correctly, community-acquired MRSA is usually a different strain from that found in hospitals. Good hygiene (and not shooting up with dirty needles) will prevent most MRSA-related problems. So frankly, I worry more about transferring multi-drug resistant acinetobacter within the hospital than I do about taking MRSA into the community.
bein a doc, i believe it is not hygenic to carry germs outside and few more back to the hospital.