Look good, feel good
Wednesday, May 13 2009
Kairol at Everything Changes is a bit skeptical of efforts to make fashionable hospital gowns:
Despite my loathing for hospital gowns, I recognize that those fly-away openings and simple, barely-there closures exist for easy access. In the end, forget designer garbs, I’d rather docs be able to access my body – especially in case of emergency.
I get where she’s coming from, but the gown does need rethinking. For one thing, hospitals are cold, and those gowns aren’t warm at all. And not everybody needs to wear the gown all the time; I think in most situations, patients get told to wear the gown because that’s what patients are supposed to wear, not because there’s any medical necessity.
The solution to this problem isn’t fancy new gowns; it’s the clothes most patients already have. When I’m in the hospital, I usually wear a t-shirt and pajama bottoms – usually old or ugly stuff I don’t mind trashing. My rule is that if I’d be sad to see it stained with blood or poo or cut off of me, I don’t wear it in the hospital. So far, though, I’ve never lost a garment to a medical emergency. Knock on wood.
Granted, there are some circumstances where pajama bottoms are contraindicated. In my case, that would be colonoscopy. But there’s nothing about a colonoscopy that wearing a gown makes more enjoyable. Instead, I wear the only thing that helps: a warm hat.
