I think the folks who work at Benefis Hospital in Great Falls do a pretty good job. A year or so ago I got to see up close how they work, and I think they did a fine job.

Yesterday the Great Falls Tribune published a story about Benefis Hospital requiring employees to wear “colors” specific to their department. Benefis hopes this will help prevent confusion from patients.

I guess some patients wondered if an employee was coming into their room to take their blood or clean their toilet. By the way, I am pretty sure the new colors don’t have anything to do with gangs.

When I first saw the illustration in the E-Newspaper version of the Tribune showing the different colored scrubs that are required to be worn, I thought they were showing the silks that jockeys would be wearing for a horse race. Giddy-up…

What was amusing to me and others who read the story is how many shades of blue scrubs the employees will be wearing at Benefis.

Nurses will be wearing navy blue. Nursing support will wear royal blue. Another group will wear peacock colored scrubs which my research tells me is a shade of blue. People in radiology will wear Caribbean blue – which probably means these people are the coolest people, mon.

Speaking as a man, I can honestly say that royal, navy, peacock, and Caribbean blue are just blue to us. We don’t have the vocabulary for shades of blue like “teal” or “turquoise” or “indigo” because the colors are just blue. By the way, white paint is just white, too.

I started thinking that maybe the person who came up with these colors needs to get outside more. Maybe they should take a day off and go look for a rainbow…

The other “colors” are interesting, too.

Respiratory therapy workers will be wearing black scrubs. I thought black scrubs would probably be worn by people who work in the morgue…

One group even gets to wear black vests! I figured the people wearing black vests would be the bill collectors, like a dealer in a poker game, but the “black vest” people will be people working inpatient and outpatient therapy. Maybe they can also use their black vests at a second job dealing cards at one of the million or so local casinos in Great Falls.

The people who work in the laboratory scored big! They get to wear “wine-colored” scrubs, which if the photo in the Tribune is correct, looks kind of like the “maroon” color used by University of Montana athletic teams. That means they can attend Griz tailgate parties wearing it. If they spill red wine on it, it will not show, although I imagine guacamole and kale will stain it.

The folks in pediatrics will be required to wear a “kid-friendly” top with navy blue pants (there’s that blue color again). The illustration shown on the E-Newspaper version of the Tribune showed a top with different colored hands all over it. You can insert your own joke here, but I don’t think it means you can get “handsie” with these employees…

Some folks will still be allowed to wear white lab coats! Pharmacists and pharmacy techs get that honor. Wearing white kind of means they are “good guys” which is cool because they have the ability to give us something to help take away our pain. That alone makes them good guys!

As for doctors, I did not see their colors listed. I suggest doctors wear gold or green colored scrubs to signify that they make the most money in the building.

Overall, I guess this should help patients understand who is doing what at Benefis – except for patients who might be colorblind…

## END ##