Where to get rainbow/pride caduceus lapel pin for white coat?

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Happymadness

Happymadness

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Does anyone know where to purchase the rainbow caduceus lapel pins? (See below for pic)

Seems like this would be a good place but they're out of stock :confused:

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There are a lot of different ones on ETSY!


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I would strongly consider not wearing any pin that involves sexuality or religion. Most importantly it might alienate patients (we take care of bigoted people unfortunately) but also may be seen as unprofessional.
 
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Dave1980 said:
I would strongly consider not wearing any pin that involves sexuality or religion. Most importantly it might alienate patients (we take care of bigoted people unfortunately) but also may be seen as unprofessional.
Click to expand...

I would argue otherwise. Almost all healthcare employees, including medical students, interns and attendings, at Mass General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital wear rainbow stickers on their badges. Other people can pitch in for hospitals in other parts of the US. I believe they provide a sense of security for LGBTQ-patients. Although, that sense of security might be false if the person wearing the sticker/pin does not have any competency on issues facing LGBTQ people or treat them as if they just saw an alien...

Anyways, I am for wearing pins. Those pins do not show the sexual orientation or gender identity of the person wearing it, but signfy a welcoming space for LGBTQ people.


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Dave1980 said:
I would strongly consider not wearing any pin that involves sexuality or religion. Most importantly it might alienate patients (we take care of bigoted people unfortunately) but also may be seen as unprofessional.
Click to expand...

I have to similarly disagree. Wearing a pin like this says nothing about one's own sexuality (although there is admittedly some correlation between wearing but rather signifies an allegiance with people whose sexual orientation and gender identity falls outside the cisgender and heterosexual norm. A declaration from any authority figure otherwise to me would be a red flag and would actually be unprofessional.
 
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YEAH! I love this topic!

What you say is correct, but the Rod of Asclepius is only used a portion of the time in US/pop culture*. The Caduceus was popularized by an early misuse by the US army,** and it still sticks around today as seen on a lot of hospitals/clinics.

I've been running an Instagram collecting instances of "medical snakes" (Caduceus/Rod of Asclepius) for a few years.*** Anecdotally, I see Caduceus used by hospitals/in relation to physicians more often than not (actually, almost universally in the US). Rod of Asclepius is used by prehospital/EMS services**** -- it is standardized on EMS worker national certification insignia/patches; the main exception to this is on TV/in movies.

I found this Caduceus pin, which is pretty good, but haven't found any good Asclepius pride pin. This should be remedied.

tl;dr, contrary to its ancient history origins which are not medicine-related, Caduceus became a medical symbol due to an insignia error by the US Military in the late 1800s/early 1900s; it remains a medical symbol in common usage today.
Rod of Aclepius is the actual historical medical snake (or the Bowl of Hygieia for pharmacists).

* based on a survey of 242 organizations related to health/medicine; between something like 30% and 70% depending on how inclusionary/exclusionary you are in your counting.
** Additional resources available upon request.
*** Additional fun fact: on different instances of the Rod of Asclepius and the Caduceus the snakes have a wide variety of "expressions".
**** If you have an exception to this I'd LOVE to talk. PM me!
 
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Hey, sorry for the confusion! This is what I said:

toli said:
...Rod of Asclepius is used by prehospital/EMS services**** -- it is standardized on EMS worker national certification insignia/patches; the main exception to this is on TV/in movies.
Click to expand...

I did not say that "the symbol of EMS is the Rod of Asclepius". It is a part of the symbol of EMS. Here's an explanation of the Star of Life from EMS.gov for the curious, and the Rod of Asclepius' part on it.
Having been in EMS for about a decade, I have had some exposure to EMS insignia so have a professional interest in addition to personal interest.
I feel pretty confident with my facts.

In terms of standardization (to address the second part of my quote), here is NREMT.org, where you can see some examples of the Star of Life with the Rod of Asclepius on it, and in the "store" section you can see how the Rod of Asclepius is standardized on uniform patches Nationally Registered providers wear - if you're wearing a NR patch, this is your option for patches - there are no variations in current NR patches (and "previous edition"/classic patches are sometimes collected by people in EMS for fun). The Rod of Asclepius is not standardized on ambulances themselves, and there isn't a lot of standardization on patches between smaller/local/state services.

If my previous post came across as a lecture, that was not my intention. This is something that I've enjoyed learning about, and thought others might enjoy too, especially in the context of wearable symbols. If you have any further issue with my facts, I'd be happy to take it up by PM.
As I said above, jokingly: additional resources are available on request -- but I am happy to really provide them!

Otherwise: Medical Snakes are cool! I hope someone finds more cool in-stock pins, because I'd like one too.
 
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toli said:
Hey, sorry for the confusion! This is what I said:



I did not say that "the symbol of EMS is the Rod of Asclepius". It is a part of the symbol of EMS. Here's an explanation of the Star of Life from EMS.gov for the curious, and the Rod of Asclepius' part on it.
Having been in EMS for about a decade, I have had some exposure to EMS insignia so have a professional interest in addition to personal interest.
I feel pretty confident with my facts.

In terms of standardization (to address the second part of my quote), here is NREMT.org, where you can see some examples of the Star of Life with the Rod of Asclepius on it, and in the "store" section you can see how the Rod of Asclepius is standardized on uniform patches Nationally Registered providers wear - if you're wearing a NR patch, this is your option for patches - there are no variations in current NR patches (and "previous edition"/classic patches are sometimes collected by people in EMS for fun). The Rod of Asclepius is not standardized on ambulances themselves, and there isn't a lot of standardization on patches between smaller/local/state services.

If my previous post came across as a lecture, that was not my intention. This is something that I've enjoyed learning about, and thought others might enjoy too, especially in the context of wearable symbols. If you have any further issue with my facts, I'd be happy to take it up by PM.
As I said above, jokingly: additional resources are available on request -- but I am happy to really provide them!

Otherwise: Medical Snakes are cool! I hope someone finds more cool in-stock pins, because I'd like one too.
Click to expand...
I took down my last post. I was in a bad mood when I wrote it, and I shouldn't have said anything. My apologies.
 
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I really appreciate it. I hope the rest of the day brings you some pleasantness, and thank you for your patience with my long-winded post -- I'm a total dork about this stuff. : P
 
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Sorry to revive this old thread, but just an anecdote. At our school we had a LGBT+ Healthcare Panel for our intro to clinical med course, and we had a FM doc who is openly gay tell us about how when he started wearing a pride flag pin on his lanyard, he was able to really tell how his patient's who were LGBT become visibly more comforted/less on edge.

I think that symbol that shows alliance and solidarity is deeply important and can do so much more for the therapeutic relationship, contrary to what that one poster said.

As an aside, yea I have been told the "two snake" version is now more co-opted by the "corporate/business" of healthcare culture, and than the single snake is the true symbol of medicine.

I, at the very least, want a Pride flag pin for my lanyard.
 
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