Several of my colleagues have said, "Why focus on nurses' caps?" "Caps are relics. Why even bring them up?" "With all the challenges facing the nursing profession and facing each nurse in the trenches every day how can you justify even bringing up the cap? It's a dead issue. Nurses have far more important things to spend their time reading about." "Caps bring back parts of nursing that no one wants to revisit such as "training" instead of educating, servitude, the hand maiden role to physicians, lack of professional status....."
In response I say, "I hear you and on many levels I agree." Why do I spend my time researching, painting, blogging, and twitting about the now defunct nurse's cap? Oh, for a multitude of reasons. Some of which I will share with you now.
I was brought into the the profession in a time and by a program that continued the long tradition of the cap. We received our plain white cap after our first semester in a capping ceremony. As we progressed through the curriculum a blue velvet ribbon was added on the back left tail at the beginning of each year. Those three blue ribbons worn as a senior were such a status symbol! Graduation included not only the general collegiate graduation but the nursing pinning and capping ceremony. We received our school pin and our graduate cap, the blue vertical bands removed and a horizontal black velvet band placed one-inch from the bottom of the cap. Oh my, I still remember how I felt knowing that that piece of white starched and decorated fabric sitting on the back of my head broadcast to all who saw it that I was a professional nurse. I can't help it. I have many very positive emotions associated with my cap.
Another reason I have taken up the cap cause is that I have always rooted for the underdog, always advocated for issues that may not be popular but have merit, and I have always thought you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. Love it or hate it, the cap is a part of our nursing heritage and it shouldn't be swept under the rug but acknowledged, researched, and documented as a part of our shared professional history.
This is enough for now. I will share more in the next post.
WONDERFUL!!!! I can't possibly express how much this says everything I have felt about the same issue! Caps are an important icon of the profession, no matter how they came about, or who was responsible for their presence, their numerous designs, or even their elimination, which is actually far from complete in the grand scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteAnd, you got light blue bands on your cap, too?? So did we! But, we got our cap,(Kay's Caps #107 style!) plain, white, and gleaming like a halo 😇, after our first quarter was completed successfully, in a wonderful, and memorable capping ceremony, and since LPN education took only one year (four quarters, including summer session) we only got two more blue bands across the left cuff corner (tail?), one for each additional quarter completed.
So, it was - First quarter (our probation) with bare heads all around, no cap; if you passed first quarter exams, then just as the second quarter began, on a blustery, but sunny, November Sunday afternoon, just before Thanksgiving, a new white cap was presented to each student along with the candle lighting ceremony that went with it 👏; the third quarter begins, and one blue corner band was added, for which I was honored to do the shopping, since I knew exactly which fabric shop had precisely the right width and color - 😁; Then, fourth and final - sounds like a football play - and it was a shorter summer quarter, with class on Fridays until noon, and clinicals the other four days a week, half the quarter in OB and the other half in Peds, and the second blue corner band was added! 🙆
This unfortunately, was the quarter I missed, BUT I was an OB patient at exactly the same time, and in the same hospital, as my own previous clinical group were doing their OB rotation! They missed the delivery, because on Friday mornings they were in class a half day, but I was still there the following week with some complications, which, while not life threatening, were a foreshadowing of things to come again, harder and more life affecting several years later.
So, I did get to become a clinicals patient for two members of the group, and my favorite instructor fairly "adopted" my beautiful, alert, blonde haired, blue eyed daughter from the nursery! Each time I went down there to watch her through the big window, between nursings, the instructor was either rocking her, or using her, with my enthusiastic permission of course, as the "example baby" to teach skills to the students (so her care was provided by the best in the biz as far as I was concerned!)
She - my daughter - even acquired a mobile over her bassinet, a "Baby gift" from the group, and since it was brand new, right out of the box, the staff let her have it in the Nursery! My instructor said that Beth was so alert and awake all the time, she thought it would give her something to focus on, and she was right! We got to take it home of course, and she got a lot of enjoyment out of it, as did her younger brother, two years later!
Anyway - back to caps! A red band all the way across the cuff, one inch down from the top edge, was our badge of completion and licensing, but ONLY after successfully completing the NCLEX-PN exam. Indiana LPNs all wore a red band, if a band was part of the cap. Only RNs of course wore black bands, but each state B.O.N. set its own particular color requirement. Virginia's was Navy Blue, Florida's was a bright green, and it seems I saw an LPN cap from one of the Midwestern states west of Indiana that had a bright yellow band.
Between graduation and passing the NCLEX-PN exam, it was a light blue band, same color as our corner bands, in the same position as our red one would be once we officially passed that test.
That, of course, was back in the days of paper and #2 pencil, "fill-in-the-circle, make no stray marks on the answer sheet" testing! For RNs too of course, since computer based, "take the test any time you can get it scheduled" testing had yet to be dreamt of, much less invented!