Not long ago, only the OR staff wore surgical scrubs. Nowadays, it seems like most of the hospital staff is wearing scrubs — clinical and non-clinical staff alike, in and out of the facility, even at the diner across the street. Here at Beth Israel Medical Center, we've come up with a simple solution to help ensure that our 31 ORs remain sterile: All the staff in the OR, and only the OR staff, wear purple scrubs. The idea is to make it easy to tell if a surgical staffer wanders out of the OR. We've even instructed our security guards not to let anybody in purple scrubs enter or exit the building. We picked purple for two reasons. One, blue and green scrubs are worn throughout many other areas of the hospital. And two, we asked our nurses what color they liked best: Purple won out. Purple scrubs have become special, only for the privileged few who work in the OR. (Vendors in the OR wear disposable dark blue scrubs.)

Donald M. Kastenbaum, MD
Vice Chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery
Beth Israel Medical Center
New York, N.Y.
dkastenb@chpnet.org