Impressions and Assessment of Medical Uniforms in Different Colors

Abstract

A survey involving 394 outpatients was conducted to examine their impressions of medical uniforms in different colors. Staff of a dental clinic were asked to wear scrubs in eight colors and white pants.

(1)Of the eight samples, the largest number of patients considered the light red-purple scrubs as “very favorable” or “favorable”, followed by the white scrubs. There was no difference in the favorability between gender and age groups.

(2) No relationship was noted between patients' anxiety over illness and their favorable impression of each sample.

(3) A factor analysis extracted four factors: “kindness/comfort”, “trust/responsibility”, “activeness”, and “design”. In a given color, the higher the brightness, the higher the score for “kindness /comfort”. The score for “trust/responsibility” (the second factor) was high when the scrubs were purple-blue, green, or a cold or similar color , and the score was low when scrubs in a warm or similar color, including red-purple and yellow-red, scrubs were worn.