Dressing Changes
Founder: Sasha Codrington
Website: www.dressingchanges.org (external link)
Imagining a new opportunity for improved patient experience.
Dressing Changes is working to ensure that every inpatient has access to clothing that supports and eases their healing journey.
Three million Canadians are hospitalized each year, accessing public healthcare to meet their medical needs. However, these patients are facing more than their medical diagnosis. Hospital stays are isolating, distressing, and uncomfortable. Patient clothing as we know it contributes to a challenging patient experience. We found that the vast majority of patients wearing a hospital gown are left feeling self-conscious, vulnerable, and exposed. Furthermore, patients describe a loss of dignity, identity, and self, and a feeling of powerlessness in a transition to “patienthood” when putting on hospital clothing.
Sasha Codrington saw the need for Dressing Changes in 2018, at the intersection of her two areas of interest. In the creation of this organization Sasha leverages a background in fashion, including a BDes from Toronto Metropolitan’s Fashion Communication program, and her lived experiences of the medical system as both a patient and primary caregiver. Through her own experiences, she saw the immense challenges that patients face day to day, and became passionate about supporting patient’s healing through improved patient clothing.
Dressing Changes addresses patient clothing with two approaches, including an inpatient service to meet patients' individual needs, and advocacy for long-term improvements to patient clothing practices in medical facilities. Our inpatient service gifts patients with clothing alternatives to the hospital gown that still meets their medical needs, while increasing feelings of self-esteem, comfort and dignity. Dressing Changes will leverage the data from our inpatient service participant’s experiences to inform our advocacy for improved hospital gowns. Our advocacy will include consultation and partnerships with medical facilities and medical textile manufacturers.
Hospital patients are people first, made up of our friends, grandparents, and children. While medical professionals address medical needs, improved patient experience supports patient wellbeing, and reduces adverse mental health outcomes. We all recognize the power of clothing to make us feel protected and confident, and it is past time that patients are offered that basic comfort during what are often the hardest days of their lives.
