Tattoos became a fashion item to the people of all age group and social background.
From celebrities to middle-age guy to young boys and girls all are fond of getting tattoos on their body.
In the past, these tattoos were liked only by the biker gangs and rebels, but nowadays personnel from any profession prefer to get them.
According to a statistic conducted in 2015, nearly one-third of Americans got at least 1 tattoo, and when it came to Millennial class, this number went over the half.
As society was warming up to the ink and art, some workplaces moved their attention to maintaining a disciplined working environment for their employees and customers. They established some rules regarding the display of tattoos.
As a result, people who want to choose nursing as their profession and have tattoos on themselves become concerned, can nurses have visible tattoos?
Can Nurses Display Their Tattoos?
If you go back to the past, you will get that nursing is one of those professions that has been following dress code since their inception. Throughout the history of nursing uniform, nurses witnessed different types of dresses, but they never went out of an official outfit.
As a consequence of disciplined nursing profession, nowadays different health institutions follow their own laws regarding the display of tattoo.
However, if you have a tattoo and want to work as a nurse, you will be happy to know that the nursing profession as a whole is fairly accepting body tattoo. But, in certain circumstance, having tattoos can cause a problem. Two of them are discussed below for your better understanding.
a) Large Tattoos
A large tattoo or a large number of tattoos can be a problem for a nurse in some health institutions. At those health service institutions, employers are advised to cover their tattoos during their stay at the hospital.
If you have a tattoo in your arm or back, you can cover it easily; but if the tattoos are on your neck or face, it will be hard to cover them all the time. So, during the interview, if the interviewer notices a large tattoo on a candidate, it may hamper the selection of that interviewee.
b) Offensive Tattoos
Innocuous tattoos (e.g. names, heart and date) are probably not going to be an issue for most nurses. But, if you get tattoos that are related to nudity, drugs, scary art or something that can hurt someone’s political and religious belief, you may face problem to be recruited.
Why Tattoos Are Not Allowed in Health Institutions?
We already said that though tattoos are fairly considered in health institutions, in some cases, the authority puts an extra restriction for some reasons. Here are two key reasons why the authority seriously considers this issue.
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Tattoos May Offend Someone
A nurse’s tattoos may offend her patient or coworkers. Tattoos that have any potentially religious, racial, political, sexual connotations may be considered offensive by the individuals who see the tattoos.
Even if a tattoo is inoffensive to most of the people, someone may find it unpleasant. The situation goes worst especially when a person is suffering severe pain and sees something on a nurse’s hand that he/she doesn’t like. So, to maintain a healthy environment inside of the workplace, hospital authority sometimes prohibits the display of tattoos.
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Professional Dress Code
Almost all the health institutions around the world follow their own professional dress code. This dress code helps the institution to establish a bond among the worker and adds a vibe of professionalism to the workers when they treat the patients.
Moreover, when a patient sees someone in office uniform, he/she finds them reliable. To uphold all the positive vibes of the dress code and maintain a standard environment, health institutions sometimes prohibit visible tattoos and piercing.
Why People Get Their Tattoos?
If you think with a professional mind, you may find having a tattoo is not so good for a person as one may have to face some unwanted situations because of it in daily life. But if you think just about the tattoo from outside of the professional frame, you may find it interesting like most of the people. In the following section, we are going to discuss some factors that inspire people to get tattoos.
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People Get Tattoos to Celebrate Their Fandoms
There are thousands of Star Wars, Sherlock, Harry Porter and Yankees tattoos on people’s arms, necks, legs and hands around the globe. When a person is obsessed with a certain television show, actor, player, leader, book, song or movie, he wants to get a tattoo on his body as an expression of his obsession.
Sometimes people get tattoos of their favorite personalities not only to express their love, but they also consider having tattoos on their body is a kind of tribute to them.
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People Get Tattoos for Sentimental Reasons
Most tattoos hold deep meaning. They are not just a random design that a person chooses to get printed onto them during a drunken night. They covey significant meaning and the design also matters.
Often people get tattoos that cover their family member or friend’s photos and names who have left them forever. People find it a way to show their gratitude and love to them. Some people also get a design of their lost loved ones’, pet, flower or song lyric. Basically, they choose a design that invokes a memory of intimacy.
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People Get Tattoo to Make Their Victory Evergreen
A tattoo can be a remark of joy and achievement. Persons who want to make their best moment memorable and always carry with them get the tattoo of their noble memories.
This kind of tattoo may be their marriage date, date of winning a major trophy, birth date of their son and daughter, or any date or moment that changes their life completely. People find these tattoos a source of inspiration and to defeat the obstacles of their life.
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People Get Tattoos as Pieces of Artwork
There are a good number of people who like the shape and design of the tattoo. They consider without having any implicit message tattoo itself is a way of beautification. For these persons, the tattoo is an attachment, it is a fashion statement and a way to express themselves in silence through ink and color.
This type of people chooses designs based on what they think is going to look best on their skin. It’s the same way other people choose their clothing and makeup in the morning. Even though their chosen design has no technical meaning still it is meaningful to them.
How to Deal with Tattoos?
If you don’t want to lose the chance to be hired as a nurse just because of having printed tattoos, you have to be careful. In this regard, your first task is to know about how the recruiter deals with the tattoos. If they allow them completely, that’s fine. If they allow them partially, you can follow these techniques.
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Cover Your Tattoos
As we mentioned health institutions are fairly deal with the tattoo issues and sometimes they allow tattoos that are covered. So, you can cover up your tattoo during your interview session. You can wear full sleeve dress for covering your arms to wrist tattoos. And if your tattoos are on the face and neck, try keeping your hair down to keep them out of visibility or use makeup foundation.
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Remove the Tattoos
If the situation is you want to be recruited and dying to be hired as a nurse but didn’t find any strategy to cover your tattoos, you can remove them completely. Typically removing tattoos takes time, but a dream job worths this kind of sacrifices.
Two Exceptions of ‘Tattoo’
Actually, people get a design they personally like, and the tattoo that is printed by ink is the best as they are easily removable and replaceable whenever you want. In the following section, we talked about a design that was widely popular not only because of any personal preference and then a form of fabric tattoo that is removable!
Traditional Nurse Tattoo
“Rose of No Man’s Land” is one of famous traditional nurse tattoo. This tattoo was drawn in the honor of the heroic actions of Red Cross nurses during the First World War.
“Imagine you are bleeding out in a trench during a relentless battle, suddenly a woman in white arrives at you as your guardian angel and takes care of your injuries. After that, you want to remember the women for the rest of your life, and finally get a tattoo of her in your body”
Actually, this kind of feeling emerged in the people’s mind and they wanted to visualize their feeling and finally depicted their feeling through having tattoos on their bodies.
The designs of the tattoo were almost similar without a few minor differences. The basic pattern of the tattoo was the face of a nurse with her uniform and a rose/roses around/side/under the face.
Nursing Tattoo Sleeve
Nursing tattoo sleeve is a type of temporary tattoo layer that is made of fabric. These sleeves tightly fit with skin. If a person sees anyone wearing these sleeves, it will be almost impossible for him to recognize that the tattoos are fake. Sleeves are removable. Though they are a favorite fashion item to the people, they are not comfortable to wear in the summer.
And again, if your hospital doesn’t allow showing any tattoo at all, you can’t wear this casual item either. However, even if your workplace allows this item, you shouldn’t wear it. Why? Because tattoo sleeve never goes with any type of official uniform.
Ending Thought
Nursing is a humanitarian profession. A nurse’s first priority should be the care of the injured people. And a health institution authority always passes rules focusing on this motto. As a result, sometimes they find tattoos innocuous, sometimes not.
The best thing you can do is to know the rules of that specific hospital before sending the CV. It’s not a big deal, just browse their official website or ask an old employee.
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Libina says
Can a indian nurse women working in usa can keep tattoo