A first year student recently commented that she was scarred during the first few weeks of her first ever placement in a hospital ward,because there were so many people in different uniforms. I had sympathy for what she was saying because when I visited a large nursing home recently, the variety of uniforms also struck me as strange and left me on edge as to who was who. The very definition of a uniform is that it is a distinctive dress worn by members of the same body. The problem with nurses' uniforms these days is that there is no uniformity nationally which identifies one grade from another. In fact, not only is there no uniformity in the nursing profession but it would seem that the colours and designs of uniforms are very common to other occupations.