By Marjory Inglis, health reporter

A SENIOR Tayside health official said last night there was “no perfect design” for nurses’ uniforms.

Gerry Marr, NHS Tayside’s chief operating officer, said nurses should take scissors to their new tunic uniforms and cut them off if they became contaminated, though he did not expect that to happen often.

The tunics have no zippers, poppers or fastenings and can only be removed by pulling them over the wearer’s head. Mr Marr said nobody expected a nurse to pull a tunic that was covered in vomit or had otherwise been contaminated over their face and head.

NHS Tayside raided hospital charity funds to provide new uniforms. In a behind-closed-doors decision, charity fund trustees approved spending £400,000 on the tunic and trouser uniforms that replaced flimsy, see-through dresses.

NHS Tayside spent a total of £1.8 million replacing the uniforms of every nurse in the region’s acute hospitals. However, nurses recently highlighted the fact they had to cut themselves out of the uniforms when they became contaminated.

Mr Marr ordered a review and has just received a report by a very senior nurse manager.

Mr Marr said that advice given to nurses was that when they were working in a situation where a patient might be sick or blood spillages occur, they should wear gloves and plastic aprons over their uniforms. He said he had spoken to the health authority’s senior infection control specialist, Dr Gabby Phillips, and she said that if a nurse felt it necessary not to pull a tunic over their head, the advice was to cut off the contaminated uniform.

Mr Marr pointed out the tunic top uniforms were worn in “the highest risk areas of our hospitals,” naming the operating theatres, intensive therapy unit, high dependency unit and accident and emergency department.

“There is nothing inherently wrong with tunic tops. I don’t think we have got a fundamental problem.”

A group of nurses that helped select the new uniforms is to be reconvened. Along with infection control specialists they will look at issuing “clear advice.”