Patent Application
20240172814
The present disclosure generally relates to medical garments and, more specifically, to devices, systems, and methods for providing breast support and security for wearers wearing medical garments without interfering with routine medical examinations and operations.
A medical gown is a type of personal protective equipment used in health care settings. They are used to protect the wearer from the spreading and transferring of disease-causing microorganisms that could harm the wearer and other vulnerable patients.
Traditional medical gowns have been designed to put all hospital patients, regardless of their gender or condition(s), in the same type of gowns along with the hospital staff. Conventional gowns were also designed to maximize clinicians' access to wearers' bodies for medical needs and emergencies. However, one downside of conventional gowns is that wearers frequently feel they do not have sufficient body coverage and privacy.
Previous attempts have been made to provide wearers with a sense of self-dignity by offering a brassiere liner in labor, delivery, and breastfeeding outfits. However, such outfits usually comprise an overlapping front-opening-only structure with a waist-tightening mechanism (e.g., using a belt wrapping around a wearer's waist area). While such outfits provide a possible solution for female wearers in specific circumstances, they have not been widely adopted by hospitals and medical facilities because of their rigid and complicated structure and high manufacturing cost.
There is an unmet need for medical gowns to provide wearers with a sense of dignity, mental well-being, and comfort and to simultaneously enable medical access to a wearer and ensure the confidentiality of a wearer's health and physical condition. In addition, it is desirable to maintain a uniform look in medical gowns. Accordingly, embodiments of the present disclosure provide for medical gowns and their manufacturing methods, offering medical accessibility, breast coverage and support, and uniform appearance.
Thus, it is one aspect of various embodiments of the present disclosure to ensure medical accessibility. In various embodiments, a hospital gown comprises an outer garment with a full-length opening. A wearer may wear a medical gown with a full-length opening either at the front or back, depending on clinicians' instruction and wearers' personal preference. One advantage of having the full-length opening is to offer clinicians easy access to the wearer's upper torso with sufficient coverage of the wearer's lower extremities.
It is one aspect of various embodiments of the present disclosure to devoid metal components. In various embodiments, a hospital gown comprises an outer garment and a brassiere. Both the outer garment and the brassiere are made with soft fabric such as cotton and linen. Neither the outer garment nor the brassiere comprises any metal or stiff component that can potentially interfere with medical examinations and procedures.
In various embodiments of the present disclosure, a closing mechanism is placed on a hospital gown's outer garment. Some embodiments feature two pairs of fabric ties attached to a full-length opening on an outer garment. This closing mechanism with a multi-point closing structure allows wearers to secure their medical gowns without blocking a clinician's access to body parts. Moreover, wearers and clinicians can freely choose to release one or more pairs of ties depending on their medical and personal needs. The closing mechanism can also be selected from a group comprising hook and loop material sold under the trademark VELCRO®, buckles, and snap fasteners.
Some embodiments of the present disclosure have an outer garment comprising short sleeves with a sleeve opening mechanism on each sleeve configured to enable clinician access to a wearer's upper torso without undressing the wearer. This sleeve opening mechanism is especially useful during a shoulder examination as a clinician only needs to open the sleeve opening mechanism without requesting the wearer to undress the entire upper body portion of a medical garment and expose a patient's breast area.
One aspect of various embodiments of the present disclosure is to provide medical gowns offering breast support so that wearers and wearers can feel more secure and comfortable.
In various embodiments, a medical gown comprises a brassiere underneath an outer garment. The brassiere is permanently attached to the outer garment through a securing mechanism, including but not limited to sewing, gluing, heat pressing, high-pressure processing, or using other adhesive mechanisms. One advantage of having a permanently attached brassiere is to reduce facilities' storage pressure as the medical gown comprising a brassiere can be stored with conventional gowns. Another advantage is a reduction in the chance of losing the brassiere parts during daily usage.
In other embodiments, a brassiere is removably attached to an outer garment through a brassiere attaching mechanism selected from a group comprising hook and loop material sold under the trademark VELCRO®, zippers, snaps, buttons, and clasps. Compared to permanently attached brassieres, medical gowns with removable brassieres can be worn by any gender, and wearers can readily mix-match the appropriate brassiere and gown sizes to receive better breast support based on their body shapes and health conditions.
Another aspect of various embodiments of the present disclosure is designed to protect wearers' confidentiality and privacy protection. It is important to protect the confidentiality of health conditions and the privacy of medical gown wearers, especially hospital patients.
Various embodiments of the present disclosure comprise medical gowns having an appearance consistent with traditional medical gowns. The outer appearance of such medical gowns is gender-neutral and identity neutral (i.e., minimizing the appearance differences between wearers and clinicians).
Some embodiments of the present disclosure comprise a concealing design of an inner brassiere, wherein the brassiere is attached underneath an outer garment without any inserted hard wire. There is little visual difference between a medical gown with or without the inner brassiere. Some embodiments comprise a brassiere made with the same or similar fabric as the outer garment.
Various embodiments of the present disclosure include medical gowns comprising an outer garment that is loose fitting with a straight-line side sewing and without an apparent waistline. One advantage is to minimize the showing of different body shapes of the wearers inside medical gowns. Further, the loose fitting allows wearers and wearers to easily conceal and carry medical devices underneath their medical gowns.
The phrases “at least one,” “one or more,” and “and/or,” as used herein, are open-ended expressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive in operation. For example, each of the expressions “at least one of A, B and C,” “at least one of A, B, or C,” “one or more of A, B, and C,” “one or more of A, B, or C,” and “A, B, and/or C” means A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B, and C together.
Unless otherwise indicated, all numbers expressing quantities, dimensions, conditions, and so forth used in the specification and claims are to be understood as being modified in all instances by the term “about”.
The term “a” or “an” entity, as used herein, refers to one or more of that entity. As such, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more,” and “at least one” can be used interchangeably herein.
The use of “including,” “comprising,” or “having” and variations thereof herein is meant to encompass the items listed thereafter and equivalents thereof as well as additional items. Accordingly, the terms “including,” “comprising,” or “having” and variations thereof can be used interchangeably herein.
It shall be understood that the term “means” as used herein shall be given its broadest possible interpretation in accordance with 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). Accordingly, a claim incorporating the term “means” shall cover all structures, materials, or acts set forth herein, and all of the equivalents thereof. Further, the structures, materials, or acts and the equivalents thereof shall include all those described in the summary of the invention, brief description of the drawings, detailed description, abstract, and claims themselves.
These and other advantages will be apparent from the disclosure of the invention(s) contained herein. The above-described embodiments, objectives, and configurations are neither complete nor exhaustive. The Summary of the Invention is neither intended nor should it be construed as being representative of the full extent and scope of the present invention. Moreover, references made herein to “the present invention” or aspects thereof should be understood to mean certain embodiments of the present invention and should not necessarily be construed as limiting all embodiments to a particular description. The present invention is set forth in various levels of detail in the Summary of the Invention as well as in the attached drawings and the Detailed Description and no limitation as to the scope of the present invention is intended by either the inclusion or non-inclusion of elements, components, etc. in this Summary of the Invention. Additional aspects of the present invention will become more readily apparent from the Detailed Description, particularly when taken together with the drawings.
It is to be appreciated that any feature described herein can be claimed in combination with any other feature(s) as described herein, regardless of whether the features come from the same described embodiment.
Any one or more aspects described herein can be combined with any other one or more aspects described herein. Any one or more features described herein can be combined with any other one or more features described herein. Any one or more embodiments described herein can be combined with any other one or more embodiments described herein.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the general description of the invention given above and the detailed description of the drawings given below, serve to explain the principles of the invention.
It should be understood that the drawings are not necessarily to scale, and various dimensions may be altered. In certain instances, details that are not necessary for an understanding of the invention or that render other details difficult to perceive may have been omitted. It should be understood, of course, that the invention is not necessarily limited to the particular embodiments illustrated herein.
Although the following text sets forth a detailed description of numerous different embodiments, it should be understood that the legal scope of the description is defined by the words of the claims set forth at the end of this disclosure. The detailed description is to be construed as exemplary only and does not describe every possible embodiment since describing every possible embodiment would be impractical, if not impossible. Numerous alternative embodiments could be implemented, using either current technology or technology developed after the filing date of this patent, which would still fall within the scope of the claims.
The outer garment also includes a full-length outer garment opening 118 with two pairs of body ties 116 and a pair of neck ties 106. It will be appreciated that the full-length opening 118 can be placed in the front or at the back of the gown, which enables the wearer to wear the gown 100 in two different orientations. In some embodiments, the gown 100 may include more than or less than two pairs of body ties 116 and more than or less than two pairs of neck ties 106. When wearing the full-length opening 118 at the back, a wearer will have the outer garment 102 and brassiere 124 in front of her and place the loose ends of body ties and neck ties at her back. The wearer may further put her arms through the two sleeves 112. The wearer may further secure the outer garment 102 and brassiere 124 by adjusting and closing all the ties 116 and 106 at her back. A wearer may also wear a full-length opening 118 in front. In such instances, the wearer will put her head through the neckline circle 126 formed by the brassiere's shoulder straps 128 and the outer garment 102. A wearer then will place the brassiere 124 at her front chest area and have the outer garment 102 at her back and put her arms through the sleeves 112. To secure the medical gown 100, a wearer will first tie the brassiere ties 130 at her back and then close the outer garment body ties 106 and the neck ties 116 at the front.
Alternatively or additionally, the brassiere may be selectively removable from the outer garment by attaching the brassiere through a removable attaching mechanism comprising, for example, a zipper, a hook and loop material sold under the trademark VELCRO®, buttons, and/or snap fasteners. Such a feature enables the wearer to remove the brassiere as needed without compromising the medical gown's regular function in certain instances, for example, when the wearer does not wish to wear the brassiere or is required by a clinician to wear the full-length opening at the front without a brassiere. The wearer can then reattach the brassiere to the outer garment.
Wearers' breast sizes and medical conditions vary dramatically; therefore, brassieres in the current disclosure come in different sizes to better fit different breast sizes and medical conditions and maximize comfortability. Outer garments may also be stocked in different sizes to fit wearers' different heights and weights. When choosing his or her medical gown, a wearer may mix and/or match the sizes of a brassiere 304 and an outer garment 302 to ensure the best fitting for his or her medical gown.
Further, a user can wear a medical gown 300 without a brassiere. In various situations, for example, when required by a clinician, a wearer may choose or be required to wear a medical gown without a brassiere. Embodiments where the brassiere is removable from the outer garment enable such flexibility. To improve comfortability, an accessory component, such as a spare set of hook and loop fasteners sold under the trademark VELCRO® or snaps, can be provided to attach to the outer garment components to even the attaching components' surfaces when the wearer is wearing the medical gown 300 without the brassiere 304.
While various embodiments of the present invention have been described in detail, it is apparent that modifications and alterations of those embodiments will occur to those skilled in the art. However, it is to be expressly understood that such modifications and alterations are within the scope and spirit of the present invention, as set forth in the following claims. Further, the invention(s) described herein is capable of other embodiments and of being practiced or of being carried out in various ways. It is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology used herein is for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.
It is to be appreciated that any feature described herein can be claimed in combination with any other feature(s) as described herein, regardless of whether the features come from the same described embodiment.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/428,351, filed Nov. 28, 2022, the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63428351 | Nov 2022 | US |
