Everyone knows the bottom half of a doctor is meaningless. They can be naked from the waist down, but if they’ve got a white coat and a stethoscope draped around their neck, you’d probably trust them to operate on you. (Joke intended) 

It’s almost as if wearing a snowy overcoat gives a person medical superpowers, and strange as it may sound, that might actually be kinda true. According to a study published in 2012, people tend to display superior sustained attention when performing tasks if they’ve got a lab coat on.

Funnily enough, this effect was only observed when the jackets were specifically designated as doctors’ coats. Participants who were led to believe that the garbs belonged to painters displayed no such improvements in performance, leading the study authors to coin the term “enclothed cognition” in order to describe how professional attire affects our ability to perform tasks.

Yet why did doctors start wearing lab coats in the first place? 

While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where and when the trend began, it seems that white coats started to become increasingly common among medical professionals around the end of the nineteenth century. It was at this time that our appreciation of the importance of microbial contamination began to increase, so the introduction of white coats may have helped to symbolize cleanliness and purity within healthcare settings.

As time wore on, the classic attire became more and more synonymous with doctors and scientists, to the point that patients began to respond to the sight of a properly dressed physician. A study conducted in 2017, for instance, found that more than half of US hospital attendees care about what their doctor wore, with more than a third saying the clothing of their caregiver influenced their overall satisfaction with treatment.

Unsurprisingly, the white coat was identified as the most highly-rated item of doctor clothing, although this varied depending on patients’ age and the type of doctor.

Over in the UK, meanwhile, a 1991 survey of medical practitioners indicated that the most common reason for wearing a white coat was that it enabled easy identification by colleagues and patients. Other motivations included the ability to carry items in the coat’s pockets and “emphasizing doctor status”.

However, in 2007, the British government introduced a contentious “bare below the elbow” policy, requiring all doctors to have exposed forearms in an attempt to limit the spread of pathogens clinging to the clothing of healthcare providers. The long-sleeved white coat was therefore effectively outlawed and has since disappeared in UK hospitals.

Yet not all doctors are happy with this development, especially given the lack of solid evidence linking in-hospital infections with medics’ clothing. Some doctors have therefore  been highly critical of the government’s decision, demanding that the white coat be allowed to make a comeback.