Fit for the job

27 July 2000



Craig Butterill, head of technical services at the FCRA, looks at the decisions to be made in specifying workwear in the NHS.


Many choices and decisions must be taken on the road to satisfying workwear requirements and considerations include design, ergonomics, performance, specifications and quality.

The term workwear is broad and from a Health Service point of view it includes items as diverse as theatre greens and the overalls used by maintenance departments. Generally, the employer provides workwear to offer employees suitable clothes for specific duties. Workwear also gives the wearer protection from the working environment, and different levels are needed.

Theatre greens not only have to provide protection to the wearer but also to the patient, and the risks here are real. Even at ward level differing levels of protection will be required.

Workwear should be functional, aesthetically pleasing and, importantly for our industry, readily launderable or cleanable, with the minimum of processing, in particular finishing.

Comfort counts

Clearly, design and ergonomics are linked. Workwear has to allow the wearer to carry out their duties in relative comfort. This is particularly so in the Health Service which operates long shifts. Workers must have freedom of movement and also feel comfortable. Freedom of movement comes from the garment’s design and cut. Comfort comes largely from the fabric used.

Remember that a uniform can look good without meeting the above criteria. Additionally, an intricate design will need much more finishing.

Two British Standards apply at this stage: BS5426 Specification for Workwear and Career Wear, which deals with the sizing and make up of garments, and BS1771 Specification for Fabrics for Uniforms and Workwear. Each of these standards makes reference to performance of the items and the methods by which they should be tested.

Sections of the standards cover launderability i.e. dimensional stability to laundering and finishing and various colourfastness tests.

As a general rule the standard allows a maximum shrinkage of 2% following washing with press drying at 150ºC. Typically the specification states a 95ºC wash for woven fabrics and a 50ºC wash for knitted fabrics.

Colourfastness is more complicated as it tends to vary with dye-type and fibre-type, but typically colourfastness to washing should be no less than grey-scale 4.

Laboratory conditions

Although results from these tests give reliable guidance, it must be remembered that the tests are performed under laboratory conditions. The garment’s performance under “actual” laundering conditions may be somewhat different. There is an argument for testing both in the laboratory and under real conditions.

Hospital workwear operates under extreme conditions, with a high risk of staining from chemical spillages, medicaments, blood and faeces. These stains generally need to be treated more severely than laundering alone.

The garment manufacturers need to be aware of the conditions in which they are used and provide garments that have been tested to ensure they can withstand the various stain removal methods.

This will not happen unless you force the issue and when specifying garments you should lay down the various processes which they must be capable of withstanding.

Of course, in some cases, the laundry operation will be separate from the supplies department and the latter will be responsible for purchasing and specifying. However, launderers are at the sharp end and must ensure they have an input into specifications.

Suppliers should be encouraged to provide meaningful aftercare instructions which reflect commercial processing.

The normal aftercare symbols are designed for domestic laundering, and clearly, for most workwear domestic laundering is not an option.

Veryifying quality

How do you achieve and verify such levels of quality? Firstly all garments should be purchased with the proviso that they meet the requirements of BS5426 and BS1771, and this should be backed up with a test certificate.

This documentation may be provided by the supplier’s own laboratory, although it is preferable to have it provided by an independent testing laboratory as this eliminates any perceived bias or commercial considerations.

Testing and quality are generally seen as expensive, but remember that the Health Service has massive buying power.

I would advise that test certificates become part of any tender document. Reputable suppliers should have no qualms in providing this information. Generally, the costs can be offset against the volume of the contracts. If the quality of the product can be assured at the outset, then the performance and life-cycle should match the purchaser’s requirements. However, when quality is not there at the start, the operation becomes expensive. Early failure leads to replacement purchases within the expected life-cycle and is clearly undesirable with tight budget constraints.

The purchaser can also verify quality by submitting samples to an independent laboratory for specification testing, possibly on a batch basis.

Original sample

Always keep an original sample from all deliveries, so if things do go wrong there is always a sample in its original condition available for testing. This counters any argument that the damage was due to the laundering process.

In a recent case, the FCRA was supplied with samples of theatre greens from an overseas client. The samples were representative of a large batch and the majority was showing early failure due to holes and tears.

The items had been in service approximately six months and the manufacturer claimed that the greens had been chemically damaged during laundering.

Fortunately one of the samples provided was in its original condition and had not been laundered. Chemical testing in accordance with BS2610 (the test method for fluidity) found there to be a high level of chemical damage to both the original sample and the laundered sample, with little difference between the two. Clearly, the damage to the items had been a pre-existing condition. This is most likely to be due to the manufacturer overbleaching the cotton during processing, the necessary agitation of the laundering process exacerbating the damage to the previously weakened fibre.

If we had not had the original sample, it would have been exceedingly difficult to prove that the damage had not been caused by the laundering process.



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