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How nurses' attire affects elderly psychiatric patients' ability to recognise them

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Hugh Joseph McCreedy  and
Peter William Bentham
Hugh Joseph McCreedy
Affiliation:
Mental Health Services for Older Adults, Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital, Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham B15 2QZ
Peter William Bentham*
Affiliation:
Mental Health Services for Older Adults, Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital, Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham B15 2QZ
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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The ability of elderly patients to identify a nurse wearing a uniform as opposed to mufti was investigated together with the effect of administrator attire on the Abbreviated Mental Test score (AMT). Thirty-six out of 71 patients identified a nurse wearing mufti increasing to 59/71 when wearing uniform (P < 0.005). Patients rated by a uniformed nurse had significantly higher mean AMT scores (6.1) than when rated by a nurse in mufti (5.6) (P < 0.01), and this also had a significant effect on the sensitivity in predicting an organic diagnosis.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , April 1998 , pp. 236 - 238
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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