By Nurses
Nursing is still a female-dominated field—but if you see a woman in a hospital, don’t automatically assume that she’s a nurse. Only assume she’s a nurse if she has a no-nonsense expression, is walking fast and looking like she’d kill for a cup of tea, and says things once while expecting you to understand them. Some nurses wear scrubs and some wear civvies—but we all wear that facial expression. It’s impossible to describe, but once you’ve seen it, you’ll know it, even at the grocery store or in line at the bank.
Nursing Students
See Medical Students, above, but subtract the business-casual clothing and add scrubs with a school patch on the shoulder. If he’s in civilian clothing, the easy way to tell a nursing student is by the hunched shoulder (from carrying a backpack full of patho books), the distracted expression (from running acid-base equations in his mind) and the stains down the front of his shirt (from trying to eat while doing six other things).
