Bhubaneswar:  The Odisha government has decided to change the dress code of both female and male employees of the nursing service cadre in the state, a health department official said on Monday.

The BJP government has finalised six different dress patterns for the nursing employees with different colour codes. At present, the female nursing staffers wear white sarees or dresses with white aprons, officials said.

According to a letter issued recently by the Health and Family Welfare Department to the Nursing Director, nursing officers and senior nursing officers (female) will wear light lavender dresses while the assistant nursing superintendents (ANS) will now wear cyan blue dresses.

Similarly, the dress colour for deputy nursing superintendents (DNS) and nursing superintendents (NS) will be white with the collar neck portion of the white apron bordered in deep purple.

As per the decision, all the nursing employees (both men and women) will now have to wear scrub suits to perform indoor duty such as ICU, operation theatre and labour room.

However, all the male nursing officers engaged in general wards and casualty services will wear deep navy blue colour formal trousers along with the allotted dress code (shirt).

Further, the female nursing officers, senior nursing officers and assistant nursing superintendent can wear saree or salwar-kameez for general wards and casualty services while the DNS and NS cadres have been asked to wear only saree for such duty.

A full sleeve apron will be provided for all ANSes, DNSes and NSes in general wards while all officers of the cadre irrespective of the rank will have their name and designation inscribed on their uniform, according to the letter.

The decision to change the dress code was taken in-principle after careful consideration of the proposal of Odisha Nursing Employees’ Association, it said.

Earlier, the BJP, which formed the government in Odisha in June this year, had decided to paint the government buildings and offices across the state in shades of orange and red. It has also changed the colour of the school uniforms of students studying in classes 9 and 10 in government and aided schools to a combination of light brown, chocolate and clay-baked yellow colours. 

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