Themost commonly cited tool for assessing nurse image is the Nursing Image Scale (NIS). Developed in the early 1990s, the NIS is based on pictorial representation of a nurse in a variety of uniform colors and styles requiring participants to choose a preferred image. A more recent scale, the Professional Image and Patient Preference Survey (PIPPS) has been developed to assess a wide variety of nurse image characteristics, including the wearing of jewelry, hairstyle, and fingernails, as well as patients’ ability to identify their nurse and to determine appearance-based perceptions of nursing skill. The PIPPS is less well researched but shown to have good internal reliability (Cronbach’s ! = .84-.87). The latter tool and its 13 statements specific to nurse image and patient preference were aligned with this study’s focus on nurse
image and the ability of patients to identify their nurse.