Made famous by the Amercian television series, Scrubs, ‘Theatre Blues’ or Medical Scrubs, are widely used by nurses, surgeons and other operating personnel as a hygienic uniform.

Medical Scrubs are popular in environments requiring a high standard of cleanliness and have been specially designed to be simply made with few places for dirt to collect or hide. They are comfortable, easy to clean and cheap to replace and often they are not ‘owned’ by the wearer but are given out and cleaned by hospitals due to the high sterility requirements.

 

Unlike nurses who were one of the first in the medical profession to require a uniform, surgeons simply wore their own clothes with an informal protective garment over the top, e.g. a butcher’s apron. Worryingly, the mark of a good surgeon was how much blood was on his clothes at the end of the day!