{"id":710040,"date":"2026-06-02T09:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T09:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/710040\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T09:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T09:03:08","slug":"royal-hobart-hospital-ban-on-colourful-fun-scrubs-for-nurses-set-to-be-overturned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/710040\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Hobart Hospital ban on colourful, ‘fun’ scrubs for nurses set to be overturned"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tasmania’s health minister has vowed to overturn a directive to stop nurses from wearing colourful scrubs at the Royal Hobart Hospital.<\/p>\n

At least two directives have been issued to nurses over the past month, instructing them to wear the hospital-provided uniform and scrubs, and to stop wearing “free dress”.<\/p>\n

One of the directives noted that some patients and visitors were having difficulty identifying nursing staff due to differing uniforms, and that nurses needed to maintain “some professionalism”.<\/p>\n

The directives outlined that there would be one day per week where nurses could wear their own scrubs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Minister denies health cuts, despite asking department to find $700m in cuts<\/a><\/p>\n

Health groups fear the impact of hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts expected to be found in the Health Department\u00a0<\/p>\n

During budget estimates hearings on Monday, independent Franklin MP David O’Byrne raised the issue with Health Minister Bridget Archer.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, it is a bit of a tough time in the hospitals at the minute, and staff morale is a key issue and is very important,” Mr O’Byrne said.<\/p>\n

“Surely given morale \u2014 and there has been a whole range of work done over many years on nursing uniforms \u2014 colourful scrubs provide a bit of highlight to the day in a pretty tough environment.”<\/p>\n

In a statement on Tuesday, Ms Archer said: “We support staff continuing to wear colourful scrubs and if any directive has been issued, I have made it clear this should be rescinded.”<\/p>\n

Loading…Hospital-provided uniforms not ideal: Union<\/p>\n

Australian Midwifery and Nursing Federation Tasmanian branch secretary Emily Shepherd said the corporate-style nurses’ uniforms provided by the hospital were not conducive to their work, such as supporting patient mobility, providing care to patients at different heights, or hygiene care.<\/p>\n

Ms Shepherd said that the hospital-provided scrubs were not ideal, as the fabric was not as breathable as other options.<\/p>\n

“Meaning that our members do get quite hot and uncomfortable at times,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Shepherd said nurses started wearing their own scrubs, which included colourful, “fun” scrubs, to combat these issues, but always wore their ID badges with their name and designation clearly visible.<\/p>\n

“It does inject a bit of life and colour into sometimes a very difficult working environment,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Our members are staring down the barrel of reduced resources and having to find up to $700 million of efficiencies \u2026 [and] we’re talking about whether or not it’s appropriate for our members to be wearing a bit of colour in the workplace.”<\/p>\n

She said patients enjoyed seeing fun colours and patterns, and it could be a good conversation starter with patients.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Department of Health secretary Dale Webster echoed the words of Ms Archer, adding that the Tasmanian Health Service had “not endorsed the approach in the emails referred to” by Mr O’Byrne.<\/p>\n

“We are supportive of the use of fun or colourful scrubs by staff,” he said.<\/p>\n

“For example, there has been a long-standing and common practice for nursing staff at the RHH to wear ‘fun’ scrubs \u2014 in particular on Fridays \u2014 and there has been no change to this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tasmania’s health minister has vowed to overturn a directive to stop nurses from wearing colourful scrubs at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,345204,345203,345205,345202,4082,44,39849,28211,47388,104873,8539,2801,13944],"class_list":["post-710040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-midwifery-and-nursing-federation","tag-colourful","tag-emily-shepherd","tag-fun-scrubs","tag-hospital","tag-news","tag-nurse","tag-nurses","tag-royal-hobart-hospital","tag-scrubs","tag-tas","tag-tasmania","tag-uniforms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}