This is the first year my school is requiring students to wear the emblemed jackets in clinics and future years will have to wear the scrubs as well. When they first announced these changes, I was vocal about my concerns and doubts. After all, I’m in my 30’s and I’ve spent years purchasing plus size medical clothing and know how hard it is to find items. My concerns were summarily dismissed because the school “had thought about those challenges.”
To make things comical, when I went in to try on jacket samples months ago, I made comments about the jacket not fitting and being skeptical about whether the next larger size would fit (they didn’t have a sample to try on). In the pre-COVID era, we wouldn’t see the jackets again until the white coat ceremony and I didn’t want to get on stage and find out that the jacket was still too small. I was met with what I like to describe as reflexive mall girl comments, like “no, that dress totally doesn’t make you look fat.” Super unhelpful. Next, when I asked for the sizing chart, I was told they didn’t have one. After all this, they still didn’t give me the size I ordered. (Fair disclosure, this is not the first time the school has tried to give me smaller clothing items than I have requested.)
What I find most annoying in all of this, other than having my completely valid concerns regularly dismissed, is that I have plain white jackets that fit me and now, when I get into my on-site rotations, I have to wonder if some dress code dick is going to lay into me for not wearing the “right” jacket.
This is one of the reasons I worked as a merchandise chair for multiple clubs. At least then I could choose products with a wide array of sizes. It went over well too. Some club members would end up buying shirts for parents, family, and friends who normally would never get clothing items because most clubs max out at an XL (frequently an XL that runs really small).