I was sitting at home on Friday evening easing into the May bank holiday weekend when I noticed something happening on Twitter that immediately grabbed my attention. As the tweets

highlighting outrage and disbelief started to pile up, I also started to get direct messages sent to me about the case of runner and nurse Jessica Anderson. She had recently finished the

London Marathon in a time of 3:08:22 while wearing her work scrubs, which was faster than the previous record for someone wearing a nurses’ uniform of 3:08:54. The problem was that her

modern uniform was out of step with the rules set by Guinness World Records on running in fancy dress as a ‘nurse’. Unfortunately, by stipulating that one had to wear an actual dress, the

result was that students and nurses took to Twitter with a vengeance. _Nursing Times_ student editor Craig Davidson started a social media campaign called #WhatNursesWear and the chief

nursing officers of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland all posted pictures of themselves in scrubs. To be fair to GWR, it spotted the PR disaster unfolding on social media and agreed to

review the situation, which it thankfully did in record breaking time compared to how long it normally takes for an organisation to review guidelines on something. On Tuesday, GWR agreed

that its guidelines for the fastest marathon wearing a nurse’s uniform were “outdated, incorrect and reflected a stereotype we do not in any way wish to perpetuate”. And said it was awarding

Ms Anderson the Guinness World Records title after all and that it would be introducing guidelines to reflect “clothes worn by nurses in the UK and around the world”. While uniforms and

what people wear to represent nurses may seem trivial to some, I beg to differ. The problem I fear is that the story neatly encapsulates a wider issue of how society still views nurses and

nursing. I don’t think I’m being too po-faced about it; I think there is a large group of people who are still living in a “Carry On…” world, rather than one with the varied and complex

skills of nursing today. I find it very disappointing, having written about nursing for well over a decade now. I hope I’m wrong but I suspect I am not; at least not entirely. Hopefully some

good for nursing’s profile will come out of Ms Anderson’s story, which was revealed by  and picked up by most of the national media. It also showed that change can be achieved by concerted

action. This should be remembered, given the significant opportunities to burn away the tired old clichés about nursing that are on the horizon. We are fast approaching the centenary of the

introduction of UK legislation on nurse registration – a milestone in its professional history – and 2020 has been declared the Year of the Nurse by the World Health Organization. These

events represent a genuine opportunity to recalibrate how nurses and nursing is viewed in the UK and around the globe. If you think about it, surely the sky is the limit for change when all

the nurses in the world pull together with the same aim.