HAWRA SABRA

I am a pediatric critical care nurse & the founder of Avicenna Scrubs. If you had asked me 10 years ago what I would be doing today, I probably would have given you a grand story that could not have been further away from my current life as a nurse entrepreneur.

I started my undergraduate degree in Beirut, Lebanon, where I had been living for most of my life at the time. During my second year of college, and with the ongoing political and economic turbulence in the region, my family and I decided to move back to the United States where I completed my Bachelor of Science in Biology.

Upon graduating, I struggled in deciding which direction I wanted to move forward. Although my goal had always been to pursue a career in healthcare, as a first-generation college student and the eldest of my siblings, I lacked guidance when it came to higher education and found it difficult to find a mentor. I reached out to a longtime friend of mine who was studying biomedical engineering to inquire about her career path. She quickly diverted my attention to the role of the nurses at her facility, stating how impressed she was with their education, as well as their integral role within the hospital.

At this point, a career in nursing had never crossed my mind and I was still very unfamiliar with it, so I decided to do some research of my own. The more I learned about nursing as a profession, the more I found much of what I desired in a career. I took the initiative and applied to a nursing program at a local university. Once accepted, I decided there was no going back. I committed and went in with an open mind.

My career started with the onset of COVID-19. Being a new nurse in the ICU was difficult enough, but coupled with a global pandemic, I was forced to overcome obstacles I never saw coming. One of those obstacles was my uniform. Living in the United States and being a Muslim woman who wears the hijab, I already found it difficult to stay well-dressed in a way that felt comfortable and modest. At least when it came to daily life, I had some options. However, when it came to the scrubs I was required to wear at the hospital, those options were extremely limited.

It was almost impossible to find long sleeved or modest scrubs, and if I did, what they made up for in coverage they lacked in comfort and function. I always felt like I was compromising one element for the other. This is where I began brainstorming ideas for modest scrubs and the inspiration for AVICENNA bloomed.

I started picking up extra shifts to gather the money I needed to start my business. It was almost a full year after my initial sketches that I began to take this idea seriously. With COVID, everything slowed down and the world was quiet for once. Instead of constantly running from one thing to the other, I was able to pause and pursue the dreams I had neglected for so long. I finally decided to take a leap of faith and began the process of creating my scrubs. Up until this point in my life, I had faced many failures and rejections, so moving forward with AVICENNA was definitely something I hesitated with.

I was fortunate enough to connect with a very talented fashion designer that helped put together the blueprint to my scrubs. Once that was done, I moved on to sampling fabrics and finding a factory that could produce the quality and quantity of scrubs I was looking for. Everything at this point was happening organically, I started to feel like perhaps this was the path intended for me after all. Finally, after months, I had my first official batch of scrubs that were ready to hit the market. In February of 2022, AVICENNA launched online and, alhamdulillah, it was a hit!

Aside from my own job as a nurse, I now took on the role of a businesswoman, accountant, social media manager, customer service representative and everything else that it took to run a business. There was so much to learn! Thankfully, I had the most amazing family and friends supporting me every step of the way. 

Although I was very pleased with our first collection of scrubs, I knew there was room for improvement. Over the past year, I have taken all the feedback from our customers, as well as my own experience with our scrubs, and reworked the designs into something I think is now perfect!

On March 30th of this year, we relaunched our brand with our new and improved scrubs and so far, the response has been amazing. I have connected with so many women that have also been struggling to feel comfortable and confident in their scrubs. I learned that struggling to accommodate modesty in healthcare was not a struggle I faced alone.

Hearing the phrase “this is exactly what I have been looking for!” is exactly what motivates me to continue growing and building this brand. I have so much planned for the future, and I am so excited for what is to come!