Nursing wardrobe malfunction

So back when I started my peds rotation for school, I went scrub shopping to finally buy some cute scrubs. I found a top that I thought was oh-so-cute and trendy and I loved it. And my typical scrub pants, which are usually  very efficient with 2 pockets on each side, did not help the situation any.

Now they’ve become a part of my wardrobe for work; and today, I discovered why “cute and trendy scrubs” are not always the best idea.

No, there was no Janet-Jackson moment (thank goodness!), but when you don’t think about efficiency when you shop for scrubs, you’re going to end up doing what I did today…all day long. So, said scrub top has pockets, yes, but the opening is all the way on the side. Like … I have to reach all the way back to my “flank” to get into it. AND, they’re super deep and wide pockets, so you can lose your pens, scissors, and brain in them (no joke). So, it’s not exactly easy to get things in and out of those pockets.

The next resort is, of course my pants pockets… ahh yes, but which one? These pants have four pockets. Well of course, everything just goes somewhere. One minute my paper is in the right leg pocket, next the left hip pocket, then the right hip, and some how winds up in one of the dreaded pockets of my top. Why I couldn’t wrap my head around putting things back in ONE place, I have no idea.

Needless to say, I was constantly looking for my paper (or my “brain” where all the vitals and I&Os go), in every pocket, all day long. I must have been doing this in all the rooms I went into, but since most of my patient’s were babies, no one (including myself) noticed it. I was in one patient’s room, however, and it seemed that for every vital sign I took, or every diaper I weighed, I had to go on this search for my paper. One hand in the pocket on the top, the other in the pocket on the leg, in and out of all the pockets until I finally found what I was looking for.

Of course, picture it, or better yet, step back from your computer and try it. Pretend you have all those pockets and  you can’t find what you’re looking for. Are you doing a dance that closely resembles the Macarena? Because I was. Every time I went in this room I ended up doing this crazed Macarena, and my two year old patient – and her family – thought it was hilarious! I was now the butt of their joke, laughed at (ok, I was laughing too).  I felt like if someone had only videotaped me, I could win some serious cash on a TV show! And what’s best was that they didn’t speak English very well, and I don’t speak Spanish very well, but I could understand what she was saying when she was laughing at me.

We all laughed about it in the end, and it broke the ice for sure. I even got my patient to smile after being scared of the vitals machine. It was a good laugh, but I’ve definitely learned to think more efficiently when shopping for scrubs. Just because they look super cute, doesn’t mean you’ll look super cute when you’re dancing the Macarena looking for your pen!