Why are hospital gowns always so awful? Is asking patients to wear ugly, ill-fitting garments about maintaining an antiquated power dynamic? Wouldn’t it be better for patients’ mental health and healing if they felt good in what they wore? — Sam, Morristown, N.J.
Whoever named that garment traditionally associated with being a medical patient a “gown” surely deserves an award for irony. In truth, that shapeless schmatta that ties in the back leaving one’s rear end hanging out for the world to see, is, as you point out, one of the most unappealing items of clothing ever made. So unappealing, in fact, that no one has actually laid claim to its invention. (If you investigate, what comes up is “Seymour Butts.” Which is, ahem, not an actual name.)
Still, the basic gown has been the default outfit handed down to those entering hospitals since at least the beginning of the last century, and only recently has that finally begun to change. Why it took so long has something to do with inertia, something to do with economics, and something to do with, as you correctly assume, the medical power structure.
The patient gown (as opposed to the surgical gowns worn by hospital personnel) was essentially designed to be the most efficient way to give patients a modicum of physical privacy while allowing doctors and nurses ease of access for examination and treatment and while also being removable during operations even if a patient was under anesthesia. It also served as a sort of democratizing uniform. In the hospital, everyone has an equal right to care.
That is all well and good, but by making everyone look essentially the same, the patient gown also served as a dehumanizing garment: an advertisement, really, that you have transitioned from being a unique individual to being a sick person. With its tie closures that are either impossible to get to because they are in the back or impossible to figure out because there seem to be about 15 of them dangling all over the place, the gown has been the bane of the patient experience.
Still, when it comes to things hospitals have to worry about, patient fashion has been pretty far down the list. (Patients can bring their own pajamas for hospital stays, but they are not made to accommodate IVs, ports, etc.) Though there were some efforts to redesign the gown in the past, most notably by Cynthia Rowley in 1999 for the Hackensack University Medical Center and Diane von Furstenberg in 2010 for the Cleveland Clinic, it is only recently that more significant efforts have been made to change the paradigm.
Part of that comes down to a broader cultural shift in which dress codes of all kinds are being questioned and “person-centered” care is on the rise. Part of it can be attributed to studies that have shown a relationship between recovery and a sense of dignity and agency over one’s own self. And part of it has to do with a subset of entrepreneurs who see opportunity in the sector.
Last year, for example, a “Shark Tank” contestant talked up her Hot Mama maternity gowns. On an even larger scale, Care + Wear, a company that specializes in medical wearables, teamed up with students at Parsons in 2018 to create a multipurpose kimono-inspired gown that is currently being used by the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals as well as about 90 other institutions, according to the company’s founder, Chaitenya Razdan.
All of which is to say that hospitals may have finally awakened to the fact that feeling healthy in your skin is also about feeling good about what goes on your skin.
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