Why does the doctor in the operating room wear a blue shirt, while the doctor in the examination room wears a white shirt?

So, why do doctors wear white clothes, why don't they wear white when they enter the operating room but wear blue? Let's find out the answer through the article below.

Why do doctors wear white uniforms?

For hospital staff, uniforms and clothing must be carefully disinfected. But disinfectants have a bleaching effect, so if you wear a different color medical staff's uniform, they will fade when disinfected. Therefore, white was chosen as the uniform color of medical staff.

Why does the doctor in the operating room wear a blue shirt, while the doctor in the examination room wears a white shirt? Picture 1

In addition, white uniforms will help patients and their family members, feel lighter visually, and not easily stimulated nervous system thereby creating peace of mind.

The color white also symbolizes purity and cleanliness, helping to give patients confidence in a clean and orderly environment.

Meanwhile, in some hospitals, obstetrician and pediatric nurses often wear pink uniforms because this is a very soft-looking color, symbolizing warmth and harmony. In addition, most children are afraid of injections, so they are afraid of white uniforms. So, pink uniforms will help children be less scared when they are admitted to the hospital.

Why do doctors and assistants wear blue uniforms during surgery?

In fact, initially the medical staff still wore white uniforms when entering the operating room. Later, a doctor discovered the weakness of this white uniform. That's when this doctor suddenly couldn't see things clearly when he shifted his gaze from the red areas due to the effect of blood on the patient's body to look at his partner's white uniform.

The reason is that during surgery, most of the time doctors are faced with images of the inside of the human body, so there is always a piece of blood red in their field of vision.

When the eye is operated in this condition continuously, it loses its ability to distinguish "red". This can lead to "oversaturation" where doctors don't notice slight differences in red between different parts of a patient's body. This phenomenon easily causes unnecessary medical errors.

Why does the doctor in the operating room wear a blue shirt, while the doctor in the examination room wears a white shirt? Picture 2

Green or blue is the contrasting color of red. So, during surgery, if doctors sometimes see something blue, it helps to refresh the impression of red in the vision, so that the brain is not sensitive to red. This will help surgeons focus on distinguishing different nuances of the human body in the operating room, while reducing the possibility of mistakes.

And for convenience, the uniforms of doctors in the operating room are blue so they can see naturally, instead of forcing them to look for a certain position to look somewhere in the operating room. .

In addition, in the operating room, the clothes of doctors and nurses are easily stained with red blood stains. Wearing blue clothing will help this red blood stain turn brown or black, which helps to correct vision more than wearing white with the blood stain causing additional red marks.

Marvin Fry

Update 06 September 2021