Do You or Your Employees Wear Flip-Flops In Practice As a Result of Work From Home Pandemic Customs?

Wearing flip-flops in the practice is still very weird and hard to come to mind in the first place. However, we should accept that the Pandemic has changed a lot of things in the way we appear to patients or at least in the way the patient perceives us as medical professionals in specific attire. Even though it may not look obvious to all Optometrists and practice managers, however, what Optometrists and their employees wear to work in practices matters to patients. One way to understand patients’ opinions on what should Optometrists wear is to get insights from surveys on patients about medical doctors. Patients prefer physicians in business attire and a white coat, or at least scrubs and a white coat. And the findings aren’t just about fashion. A study asked patients to look at pictures of male and female physicians in seven different forms of attire. Patients were asked to rate physicians in each photo on how knowledgeable, trustworthy, caring, and approachable the physician appeared, and how comfortable the attire made the patient feel. Photos included the following attires:

• Casual: Short-sleeved collared shirt and jeans with tennis shoes, with or without a white coat;
• Scrubs: Blue short-sleeved scrub top and pants, with or without white coat;
• Formal: Light blue long-sleeved dress shirt and navy-blue suit pants, with or without a white coat, with black leather shoes with one-inch heels for women and black leather shoes for men, and a dark blue tie for men
• Business suit: Navy-blue jacket and pants with the same dress shirt, tie, and shoes as in the “formal” option, without a white coat

Among the different attires, Formal attire with a white coat got the highest score on all five measures. The second attire was Scrubs with a white coat, and the third attire was Formal attire without a white coat.

A recent study furthermore studied public perceptions of physicians’ attire and gender biases to understand whether they may result in differing expectations and perceptions of female and male physicians and may be associated with patient rapport and trust building. The study survey respondents rated physicians wearing casual attire as less professional and experienced than those wearing white coats. The study also revealed Gender biases in impressions of professionalism. Female physicians’ roles are more frequently misidentified which leads to professional role confusion and cumulative career disadvantages for women in medicine.