White Coats or Scrubs? Best Dressed Surgeons Need Answers

Do the “right” clothes make the doctor? Do they affect how patients’ judge their medic’s competence? A study in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research reports that what they wear influences patients’ opinion of a doctor’s skill and competence.

Researchers from Temple University, Philadelphia, surveyed 85 patients at an outpatient orthopedic clinic. They showed the patients eight pictures, four of female and four of male doctors. In the pictures, the surgeons were wearing a variety of clothing including: a white coat covering formal attire, scrubs, business attire and casual attire. The patients were asked to judge the surgeons on how good they believed they would be would be at performing the surgery. In other words—did they look the part in a profession where customer attitudes can play a major role.

A male surgeon wearing a white coat rated higher in confidence, intelligence, surgical skill, trust, ability to discuss confidential information and safety than did a surgeon wearing business attire. In every category patients preferred the white coat to casual attire.

For female surgeons, there was no difference in patient attitudes between the white coat and scrubs. However the white coat was preferred over business attire in a majority of categories. Patients disliked it when providers wore casual clothing.

The researchers concluded that patients preferred surgeons who wore a white coat, and were more likely to believe that any upcoming surgery would go better if the surgeon was a wearer of a white coat or scrubs.