Call Me Old-Fashioned

I doubt, though, that it's only grumpy old farts who experience a swift assessment leading to a lack of confidence in the professional credentials of a health-care worker whose exposed flesh is cartooned over with tattoos, however attractive, and made further exotic by metal bits and pieces hanging from nose, eyelids, lips. Attractive? Anything but.

The reaction of those who are ill and who have entered hospital to become well thanks to the tender ministrations of health-care workers to being exposed to some of those workers casually sporting tattoos and dangling metal bits is likely always hesitant. Aware of this, The Ottawa Hospital administration made an attempt at imposing a uniform code.

One that recommended against tattoos or nose rings. Lest the patient perish from the anguish of apprehension viewing such an apparition posing as a responsible, professional technician or nurse. The hospital argued before an arbitrator that such 'body art' often has the effect of disturbing patients who are in dire need of quiet rest and rehabilitation.

But Arbitrator Lorne Slotnick was singularly unimpressed. While older patients might feel negatively on first impression, he allowed, there was no evidence brought before him other than assumptions that such a presentation might affect patient health. But such a dress code would by its very nature impose an unjustifiable restriction on health workers' right "to present themselves as they see fit".

The lawyer for CUPE, acting on behalf of the hospital employees, scoffed at the very idea that patients would be deleteriously impacted by the health workers' appearance. "There was a suggestion that this is the worst day of these patients' lives, they're in the hospital, the last thing they want to do is see this person with a tattoo", he sputtered. Right, on that count; that isn't what patients want to see.

Under the disputed dress code, employees were informed they must not wear shorts or jeans, should keep skirts knee-length or lower, should cover large, visible tattoos, and should wear only "minimal and conservative" piercings. To an old nag like me "minimal and conservative" should be interpreted as none. 

As for being confronted by the vision of a nurse wearing shorts or jeans, the impression left is not only unprofessional, but completely lacking of respect for self, let alone the effect it would have on the sensibilities and confidence of the patient. Sloppy, slovenly, uncaring presentation is not conducive to gaining the confidence of someone anticipating professionalism.

Attire represents an outward manifestation of the seriousness with which a worker takes his/her occupation. Old-fashioned perhaps, but reflective of a reality. At the arbitration hearing the hospital claimed the rules they sought to impose were meant to have the effect of boosting patients' confidence in health workers. A reasonable explanation.

The hospital felt that "freedom of expression for employees must take a back seat in a health-care setting when people are fighting for their lives"; a trifle dramatic perhaps, but an accurate enough interpretation of priorities. A clerk in one unit testified her humiliation when a manager informed her she must cover her tattoos, remove her piercings, and not wear tight-fitting leggings. Poor dear.

A study conducted in Maryland and published in 2012 concluded that patients shown pictures of various health workers reacted unfavourably to tattooed and pierced employees, while an Italian survey of hospital patients concluded that patients there considered doctors' long hair, visible tattoos and body piercing inappropriate.  Pretty universal, isn't it?