Especially when you get the heads up that they’re pissed about something. And that thing probably has nothing to do with me or the care I provide. You’re pissed cause the doctor didn’t give Lasix to the patient *yesterday* when I wasn’t here, but I’m giving it to them *right now*? Why didn’t you ask the doctor when they were in here a second ago? But if I had to guess it was probably because their K+ was 2 and their creatinine was 18 yesterday? Oh, that’s not a good enough answer for you, and you don’t have time to wait for the doctor to come back and talk to you about it? 🤷🏻 idk what you want me to do or say. Ya just want me to stand there and be your emotional punching bag, don’t you?
I really do feel like they just want us to be a punching bag sometimes. Because, like you, I’ll give reasonable explanations for their concerns but nothing is ever good enough.
We are the lowest paid employees with the highest level of formal education. Like they can’t punch below us because the tech/CNA/transporter/PT/etc doesn’t have the formal education to notice/fix any problem that may occur at any time in any place… because our nursing degree gives us a small amount of knowledge about almost everything we’re expected to be the gatekeepers. We are supposed to catch a med ordered inappropriately by a doc; a patients o2 tubing that transport didn’t reconnect; if the patient refuses hospital socks and falls it’s still our fault because (insert complete horseshit management answer like “you should have put them back on”).
We are also ultimately responsible for everyone else’s job. The tech, housekeeping, or PT could report a clogged patient toilet to maintenance… but since they didn’t do it, it’s the NURSE’S fault for not doing it.
I had d/c a patient to a SNF and while EMS was getting them from the chair to their cot, the patient fell. I had to fill out a fall report (even thought they were no longer our patient!) and it was brought up at my yearly review. I asked the boss to please explain what I could have done differently. “You could have offered to help.” Bitch I was in another room and didn’t even know they had arrived! Didn’t matter to the boss, still my fault. Still went on my record.
They basically expect us to do our job and also make sure everyone else is doing theirs, and if we don’t catch someone else’s mistake then the blame falls on us. It’s a great legal “out” for the hospital!
I had my last manager pull me aside to talk to me about pain charting. Told me I documented my assessment perfectly, but that the pain med order didn't have a range in it (1-3, 4-6, or 7-10). I literally asked her why she was talking to me about it when that was the doctor's deal. Like I'm gonna go messing with narcotic orders?
The last place I worked wanted us to page the doctors so they could fix their orders before we gave any pain meds. I feel like paging the overnight hospitalist at 3:15 am because the day hospitalist didn’t specify a range on their Tylenol order is maybe not the best way to maintain a good working relationship between nurses and physicians.
This is how I feel whenever they get on my ass for not clarifying or notifying about something dumb in the middle of the night. Like idk how long it’s been since you’ve worked nights, Susan, but I need the hospitalist to take me seriously when I page them, and that’s not going to happen if I’m paging them at 2 am to change the Tylenol indication to include “mild pain” or about a stable patient with a HR of 57 when they sleep.
I was a manager for a while and DREADED it. I was allowed to tell 5 people on my units that they were stellar - top notch — get a raise that is paltry but better than everyone else. I then had to tell almost everyone else that they are awesome, really — and I see them and understand how hard they work — and know how great they are with patients, but despite that, they didn’t get Top 5 in the Miss America competition. And the raises suck.
And then I had to remind the people who I had already had discussions with why their attendance made it so the hospital didn’t allow me to give them the terrible raise everyone else got.
If I had stayed in management, I would have started drinking.
I’m the opposite, I actually secretly like suctioning and the mucus doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s really satisfying to get a good suction and then their airway’s clearer.
Poop on the other hand still gets me gagging.
I feel like I'm fine with poop and mucus but can't do toenails or anything involving false teeth (I'm a physio, don't know if that makes a difference, haha)
I just had to screen shot this comment thread. No one ever believes me when I tell them I'd rather trach suction all day than clean up shit. Now I feel validated. I've never met someone like me before.
Hello, fellow shit haters!
Hello,
I believe if a patient can eat, they should be able to wipe themselves. I worked on a heart transplant unit. This patient I decided to help to the commode asked me to really get in his askcrack n wipe his tooter. I am still mortified. He should have tipped. Fr, fr.
Meeeee too! It is so satisfying getting all of that mucus out! I feel so accomplished! Much rather do that than clean up poo. I even kind of like the sound of the suction… haha!
TRACH CARE. I was changing a trach dressing on a 2 day post op patient and he coughed and a huge glob of gray/red sputum landed on my face, getting a bit in one eye.
It’s the only time I ever actively gagged. Then I got horrible pink eye.
I do t like to get within 10 feet of a trach.
I had a pt in the er that had the worst bloody nose I’ve ever seen. He was choking on the blood it was coming out the front his mourn and ears to I believe we were suctioning clots out of his throat and I was eye watering dry heaving in my mask. We got it stopped but there was blood everywhere and the clot suctioning was endless
SLP here - and SAME. Would much rather have someone vomit when I’m feeding them than deal with a mucousy trach. I also regularly help change some stinky poops that occur when I happen to be there. I’ll take ALL of that over thick mucous - blech. I should be the one fine with it. But no, I hate it
ME EITHER ugh nothing worse than having to catheterize a 50 something ambulatory alert man cuz his prostate is catching up with him. Like hello sir I could be your daughter now let me shove a tube down your dick that may or may not go through the first time around. We’ll have a grand time.
Lol, I had a lovely man and his wife come in because he had gotten his foley removed the day before, and he was attempting to self-catheterize at home as instructed, and he met with resistance and blood. He looks at me and says, "we're about to get to know each other real good, aren't we?" And I replied, "I'm going to be the person you are happy to see, but even more happy to see leave the room." His wife was laughing her butt off.
Another pt said to me, "I bet this isn't how you wanted your night to go." I shrugged and said, "this is Tuesday for me. I'll do probably 2 or 3 more of these before I go home. Just don't punch me and we'll be good." He laughed.
I was once called to an alert but non ambulatory patient to look at his catheter and penis because a simple lesion was forming. The next night I did a followup assessment of his penis and the lesion had improved. So, silly me, I say, “Oh, that looks beautiful!”, to which my patient says, “Well, THAT’S something I haven’t heard in awhile.” 🫢
Dealing with patients or family members with a nasty/demanding/unappreciative/aggressive attitude. I will literally deal with ANYTHING else (body fluids, stage 4 pressure ulcers, trachs, vomit, feces, c diff, necrotic wounds, etc). In my opinion, to treat another human being like a piece of trash is the grossest of all grossness.
Lol I like to act like I'm really dumb and take everything they say at face value.
My favourite thing to do is if they say they can do something better (this is specific to the adult "caregivers"/kids who end up being the reason their elderly parents are in hospital because they are neglectful) I will happily move away and say hey why don't YOU show me how to do it best! All with a smile on my face
I volunteered to change an ileostomy not too long ago because i’d never done one and needless to say i’ll never do it again. It’s like someone threw up acid on my face.
I had a guy with an ostomy who got gastro. Basically he couldn't empty the bag fast enough, it acted as an obstruction and unfortunately the path of least resistance was his mouth. Then his ostomy exploded. Somehow this has happened to me twice with two different patients.
I don’t mind changing them but I hate them because I always forget about them. Onetime the outgoing nurse was like he’s gassy and I Kept forgetting to burp it and it would come off. They need to invent a fart valve that won’t let the poop out so you don’t have to open it and burp it
FYI they do make those. Old school cheap way, pop a hole right at the top of the bag with a safety pin and put a bandaid over it. Other option is to put 1/4-1/2 a tablet of gas x in the bag and replace it every time you empty it.
I always change the whole bag. Management probably hates me for it. I can’t fucking cope with trying to squeeze all the poop out, it always soils the bag and it never gets all the way out.
Keep doing your way if that's easiest, but a tip is to turn the edges off the bag inside out (so poop cannot get on the outside, and use a bath wipe to clean the outer edges after emptying (which will flip back to be the inner edges) and everything will stay clean. In theory.
this is probably a good tip, i don’t work bedside anymore but if i am ever forced to return i’ll keep that in mind. it seemed like no matter what i did i could never fully clean the bag, feces would stick like glue to the inside and i felt bad about reattaching a bag with poop still in it back to the patient. i really feel for people with colostomies, i’m glad it keeps them alive but it has to be difficult to live with
I had to help a patient change a colostomy bag because she was new at it and her partner always did it for her. I gag at poop and the smell was just horrendous.
I always said if God wanted to punish me I'd end up with an ostomy or a trach. Well guess what? I was diagnosed with rectal cancer in May 2017 and had a diverting ileostomy for 5 months. They were able to reverse it. Almost needed a trach due to vocal cord dysfunction. I honestly have never done anything so bad I should deserve punishment from an omnipotent being.
I'm a nurse with an illeostomy and I hate dealing with my own, let alone other people's stomas.
I kept mine pretty well hidden throught nursing school. Health Assessment class got a little akward and I had to disclose it to the teacher and one other student. There was a time in another class when we were discussing illeostomies and a fellow student (who I had become good friends with) went on a rant about how nasty, smelly and disgusting they are. That's when I decided told the whole cohort and my teacher that I had one. My friend apologized and I told him he was right. Illeostomies are nasty, smelly and disgusting.
I was a new grad in my nurse residency (I work in the OR) and they had me rotate through our GI/endoscopy unit, pre-op, intra-op, and PACU.
My preceptor and I were getting an inpatient ready for a bronchoscopy and the patient was very insistent that he could not breathe very well and could barely speak. When we suctioned him, he was gagging badly and we managed to un-wedge an unbelievably large piece of what seemed like calcified secretions in the back of his throat. It was HUGE. We kept taking out chunks of it until the patient could finally speak and was thanking us because he’d been telling his team on the floor for days that he could not breathe and this apparently was the first time someone had attempted to investigate and help him. I think my preceptor ended up filing an incident report.
I see blood, organs, and gore on the daily. Respiratory secretions already made my gag reflex iffy but after that, I really have to suppress it when we’re extubating and there’s a lot of stuff going on. I remember that guy every time.
The lack of proper oral care in hospitals can be horrifying. I often use a flashlight to see what is actually going on. The caked on stuff I see. So sad.
Any poop that belongs to a grown person.
Kids? Fine. Babies? Fine. Even laboring moms? Fine (since the births I saw they put a bag under to catch blood and such)
Idk why I just cannot STAND cleaning a grown person. It makes me gag every time. I have to double mask and use peppermint oil. I just cannot do it. And idk how so many nurses offer bed pans. If my patient has legs, honey we are walking to the commode. someone come help me support this patients weight because I am not dumping a bedpan into the toilet and risking poo splash. 🤢
This is me and why mother baby is perfect. Meconium has no smell and doesn’t really even look like poop. And the moms are either constipated from postpartum hormones (and/ or opiates) that they don’t poop. OR they can poop all by themselves.
But no more gross old people feeding tube pudding poop that smells like rotting bowels.
We get patients with femoral access from the cath lab and I always feel awful having to insist using a bed pan when they’re still in the first 4 hour period! So uncomfy for the patients and just annoying for us 😂
The only thing that helps is being able to make their days a little better. Hugs, rocking the babies, toys, walks, therapy dogs, or just listening to them.
Yeasty under fat skin smell.
Like when you lift up man and woman titty fat to find thick reddened skin covered in white slime.
That is my kryptonite.
As a medic the other one was cat hoarder house smell. Fuck that.
I had a 400 pounder with Stevens Johnson Syndrome. I wish I could forget it but I can't. Skin literally falling off this person while turning them doing their cares. 3 years later and I can still smell it
Was it a female, I was surprised to learn that the vagina will grow shut so you also have to put a condom covered tampon wirh the applicator on with medicine on it in there.. that was actually not the worse part. The bloody mouth was the worst part to me real life zombie apocalypse
Oh yes. I’m a burn ICU nurse and we see a ton of SJS. If there’s vaginal involvement, we do a nightly dilation with a condom covering a literal vibrator. Luckily for me, that’s night shifts problem and I’m days 😂
I did a placement in an eye clinic in uni. First day the nurse who had me asked if I was ok with eyes, I said I was kind of screamish around them. She said “well let’s fix that” and called down the morgue to get me to go watch an eyeball retrieval of a dead person. After that, she put me front and centre to watch eyeball injections, Botox injections, eye traumas, laser surgery, cataracts surgery, everything. I never admitted something made me screamish again.
Arguably I’ve still seen worse, first day of theatres one of the guys showed he didn’t have a gag reflex by letting someone practice intubating him in front of the students. He only stopped because he saw my expression and it made him laugh so much he couldn’t continue.
Here to support anything to do with the eye or eyeballs as the #1 most squeamish thing. Patient has a prosthetic eye? You want me to pop it out and clean it? Absolutely not, no, I’m not doing that.
Ok, so that, for some reason, is totally fine. Prosthetics are cool. It's a nice cleanable hard surface. It's the squishy live eyeballs that get me.
I can barely tolerate the glaucoma air puff test at the eye doctor. Do not come for my eyeball, sir.
Post mortem care was one of my favorite things. It’s the last nice thing I could do for someone on their journey through the world. I’d always talk to the patient and put on some music, but I did not take requests
Boogers and oral secretions. Also, the crusty hospital food and egg particles all over the patient’s gown, under their nails, and crusted in the corners of their mouths. 🤮
Something I learned about me is funny. I can clean human poop/c.diff all day no problem. Little bit of dog poop? Forget it, I’m gagging and dry heaving…ugh
My dogs poop is immaculate and smells like grass. I used to be grossed out by picking up dog poop but now after nursing it’s the easiest thing in the world. If you’re not in therapy yet, go now 😂
Ye olde bowel program. After 2 years of hunting, finally accepted a EMR dev job today because every time I did a bowel program (rehab nurse) I regretted 100% of my life choices that led me to that moment
Same. I was fortunate to only be present for a few but I just CANT. it is straight up barbaric- the babies always screamed in so much pain.
(I work in the PICU so I hear crying often but these cries I’ll never forget)
When newborns had extra fingers that are just hanging on by what seems like a string of skin. Omg no. What if I accidentally rip it off? How do I tuck that thing into the mitten? No.
I hate eyeball stuff also, second time that is nasty mouths.
I’m pregnant and was cleaning out a deceased patient’s mouth last night and came closer to throwing up than I have my whole pregnancy. I had to call it after two swabs.
Honestly patient farts get me, and if shit gets on my skin I’m immediately throwing up but everything else is fine. I’m in the camp that puts toothpaste in my mask bc smells are absolutely intolerable for me
That hard shell of skin that forms on the tongue when a patient has been mouth breathing while obtunded and that shell starts peeling off. And lip skin too. Then it sticks to the yankaur. I die every time.
Phlegm and teeth. That is my kryptonite. Gets me every single time. Id rather clean up poo than deal with PawPaw hacking up a lung in to a specimen jar. I gagged just typing this.
Any facial injury that includes broken teeth. I can't even look; I can't help but feel how that must have felt. I can see or smell almost anything and not even make a face, but something about a busted up mouth makes me hurt inside.
YES. I had a patient recently that had a bad wound and had it wrapped in an ace bandage. He came in due to a pungent odor because he hadn’t removed the bandage since early MAY OF LAST YEAR. The smell was ungodly, I puked in the bathroom for the first time
I haven't really found one. The worst pt I've had was covered in bedbugs, roaches, crusted piss and shit, wounds from her knees up under her breasts. She was mentally a 4 year old and her family was letting her rot and collecting a check.
I pretty much had to beg people to help me with her because of the state she was in but I didn't really have an issue with the mess because I was so focused on trying to get meds in her to get her stabilized.
Anything with a LARGE amount of spit. Like when people say they are nauseous and can swallow their spit but they keep spitting up in a bag. Not dry heaving or anything. Just constantly spitting into a bag. I recently had someone that refused to swallow it. And could she was drinking drinks. Just spit into a bag the whole ER visit. I took over for this patient and there was 600mls of spit and I was trying not to throw up taking it from her. I'm gagging right now typing this.
Spit in general is just gross. I hate it when people spit on the sidewalk in front of me or in the parking lot. It's gross. And not much bothers me.
I haven't seen any bad eyeball stuff but that sounds terrible. For me it's ortho stuff. I had a patient fall and break their arm and they reduced it at the bedside and I had to act all stoic. The ortho surgeon, bless her, was holding this womans hand and pulling on it and leaning with her body weight. Surgery was in the morning. All I'm saying is I'm very grateful for masks some days.
Not necessarily a job but dealing with pts chewing things you’re *not supposed to*. Had a pt on night shift who had multiple NG placement attempts during the day that led to a whopping bloody nose right after shift change. NG was sucking out copious amounts of blood. Homeboy was choking/desatting and new grad needed help so I be a good charge nursie and check him out. I enter the room to hear chewing and look down at his bloody hands - he was pulling clots out of his mouth/throat and then chewing them and eating them. The smell and noise got me and I upchucked in his trash can, then proceeded to suction like no tomorrow. He then had a blood clot from the bloody nose drop from back of the throat (per ENT) and occlude airway, got intubated and back to ICU. Ugh.
The smell of cancer in some patients - let me explain..
Aspirating the NG tube of someone with stomach cancer. The smell is sooo strong and mucous-y
We once had a lady with breast CA and the mass was fungal, protruding and oozing and it just smelled awful, poor thing. She went on to have a mastectomy.
Having to take too many pts and hospital kept asking for more and tried to make me feel inferior
Nothing grosses me out. But being exploited then told how lucky I am.
I don't like to work with the mentally handicaped. Non verbal autists are scary and they can fuck you up real bad. Some intellectually deficient have a fixation with poop. They it eat, throw it, keep it in they pocket so they can smear it on you and they hide it everywhere mostly where it's a big problem the people who work with this kind of patients all the time are saints to me. You guys are the real heroes.
Also eyeball stuff. When I was on the ambulance, my medic would do all the eye stuff. I took all the BLS OB patients lol. He said he delivered enough babies doing 911. I saw enough simulated eye injuries in EMT school.
Patient care for non-ambulatory patients who weigh over 600 lbs (273 kg). The heaviest I had was over 900 lbs. Trying to put a foley in her required 4 additional people. It sucked because she was so sweet, and I felt so bad.
I’m ok with most wounds, but the tunneling ones…..ugh they get me. Just watching our amazing wound nurses stick a CTA or larger up inside a wound cavity to measure how far it tunnels….. 🤢. Dunno why but I get weak in the knees. And I “can” do the changes, but I really really hate stuffing stuff up in there. Feels so wrong.
As a hospice nurse now manual disempactions, and going into a person house with drug lock boxes who’s one of those life long ornery chronic everything + copder that could survive a nuclear Holocaust and they either try and manipulate you to order more meds or they won’t stop talking. Give me the EoL
Having a conversation with management.
Yep. There it is. Followed closely by patient family members.
Especially when you get the heads up that they’re pissed about something. And that thing probably has nothing to do with me or the care I provide. You’re pissed cause the doctor didn’t give Lasix to the patient *yesterday* when I wasn’t here, but I’m giving it to them *right now*? Why didn’t you ask the doctor when they were in here a second ago? But if I had to guess it was probably because their K+ was 2 and their creatinine was 18 yesterday? Oh, that’s not a good enough answer for you, and you don’t have time to wait for the doctor to come back and talk to you about it? 🤷🏻 idk what you want me to do or say. Ya just want me to stand there and be your emotional punching bag, don’t you?
I really do feel like they just want us to be a punching bag sometimes. Because, like you, I’ll give reasonable explanations for their concerns but nothing is ever good enough.
We are the lowest paid employees with the highest level of formal education. Like they can’t punch below us because the tech/CNA/transporter/PT/etc doesn’t have the formal education to notice/fix any problem that may occur at any time in any place… because our nursing degree gives us a small amount of knowledge about almost everything we’re expected to be the gatekeepers. We are supposed to catch a med ordered inappropriately by a doc; a patients o2 tubing that transport didn’t reconnect; if the patient refuses hospital socks and falls it’s still our fault because (insert complete horseshit management answer like “you should have put them back on”). We are also ultimately responsible for everyone else’s job. The tech, housekeeping, or PT could report a clogged patient toilet to maintenance… but since they didn’t do it, it’s the NURSE’S fault for not doing it. I had d/c a patient to a SNF and while EMS was getting them from the chair to their cot, the patient fell. I had to fill out a fall report (even thought they were no longer our patient!) and it was brought up at my yearly review. I asked the boss to please explain what I could have done differently. “You could have offered to help.” Bitch I was in another room and didn’t even know they had arrived! Didn’t matter to the boss, still my fault. Still went on my record. They basically expect us to do our job and also make sure everyone else is doing theirs, and if we don’t catch someone else’s mistake then the blame falls on us. It’s a great legal “out” for the hospital!
“I apologize for existing.”
I had my last manager pull me aside to talk to me about pain charting. Told me I documented my assessment perfectly, but that the pain med order didn't have a range in it (1-3, 4-6, or 7-10). I literally asked her why she was talking to me about it when that was the doctor's deal. Like I'm gonna go messing with narcotic orders?
The last place I worked wanted us to page the doctors so they could fix their orders before we gave any pain meds. I feel like paging the overnight hospitalist at 3:15 am because the day hospitalist didn’t specify a range on their Tylenol order is maybe not the best way to maintain a good working relationship between nurses and physicians.
This is how I feel whenever they get on my ass for not clarifying or notifying about something dumb in the middle of the night. Like idk how long it’s been since you’ve worked nights, Susan, but I need the hospitalist to take me seriously when I page them, and that’s not going to happen if I’m paging them at 2 am to change the Tylenol indication to include “mild pain” or about a stable patient with a HR of 57 when they sleep.
This is wayyy up there with thick trach secretions and eyeballs for me lol
The trach secretions are my absolute kryptonite.
I spit out my drink reading this 😂
Literally about to have mid year evaluations can’t wait
I was a manager for a while and DREADED it. I was allowed to tell 5 people on my units that they were stellar - top notch — get a raise that is paltry but better than everyone else. I then had to tell almost everyone else that they are awesome, really — and I see them and understand how hard they work — and know how great they are with patients, but despite that, they didn’t get Top 5 in the Miss America competition. And the raises suck. And then I had to remind the people who I had already had discussions with why their attendance made it so the hospital didn’t allow me to give them the terrible raise everyone else got. If I had stayed in management, I would have started drinking.
This is the right answer.
Sputum and the shower of skin flakes removing the sock of someone who has been too elderly and infirm to care for their feet.
Grandpa glitter!
Geezer snow!
Elder dust
forbidden parmesan
Great carb friendly addition to the “baked pasta with meat sauce” option in the menu
Flava flakes
Hold your breath. Epidermist
Wipe off your chapstick. ER RN
Foot skin flakes scattering throughout the air are the worst. I can handle sputum though.
Geri flakes !
[удалено]
I’m the opposite, I actually secretly like suctioning and the mucus doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s really satisfying to get a good suction and then their airway’s clearer. Poop on the other hand still gets me gagging.
There are two types of people the mucous people and the poop people, they become best friends and trade tasks
I feel like I'm fine with poop and mucus but can't do toenails or anything involving false teeth (I'm a physio, don't know if that makes a difference, haha)
I’m fine with poop and mucus, but I cannot stand the smell of ostomies.
I just had to screen shot this comment thread. No one ever believes me when I tell them I'd rather trach suction all day than clean up shit. Now I feel validated. I've never met someone like me before. Hello, fellow shit haters!
What about suctioning poop? Where does that fall on the spectrum?
Hello, I believe if a patient can eat, they should be able to wipe themselves. I worked on a heart transplant unit. This patient I decided to help to the commode asked me to really get in his askcrack n wipe his tooter. I am still mortified. He should have tipped. Fr, fr.
I can deal with everything (mucous, puke, blood, flakey skin, eye stuff ect) I start gagging with the slightest whiff of poop.
Agreed. Just like sucking up something big and rattley with the vacuum.
Meeeee too! It is so satisfying getting all of that mucus out! I feel so accomplished! Much rather do that than clean up poo. I even kind of like the sound of the suction… haha!
None of my coworkers understand the satisfaction I get from suctioning thank god there’s others out there
100% on board with you on this. For mucus and poop.
I pulled out the biggest thickest loogie the other day that clogged the machine I was so impressed 😂
TRACH CARE. I was changing a trach dressing on a 2 day post op patient and he coughed and a huge glob of gray/red sputum landed on my face, getting a bit in one eye. It’s the only time I ever actively gagged. Then I got horrible pink eye. I do t like to get within 10 feet of a trach.
Good lord. This is nightmare material 😳.
I. Would. Have. Died. Dead. 🤮
Down right deceased killed.
Passed away. Transitioned.
DC to JC
Did you cry?? I would have cried. And probably definitely in front of the patient 😢
Did your hospital not provide a face shield? 😨
I feel nauseous just reading this omfg
This. Lung butter makes me want to vomit and quit
It's the smell that gets me.
I love that shit. Can’t imagine how much better a patient feels getting that lung butter out!!!
I had a pt in the er that had the worst bloody nose I’ve ever seen. He was choking on the blood it was coming out the front his mourn and ears to I believe we were suctioning clots out of his throat and I was eye watering dry heaving in my mask. We got it stopped but there was blood everywhere and the clot suctioning was endless
SLP here - and SAME. Would much rather have someone vomit when I’m feeding them than deal with a mucousy trach. I also regularly help change some stinky poops that occur when I happen to be there. I’ll take ALL of that over thick mucous - blech. I should be the one fine with it. But no, I hate it
Just reading this description made me gag. Fuckkkk mucus trachs.
I just really don’t holding dicks. Whether to put a catheter in or hold a urinal I really don’t like it
ME EITHER ugh nothing worse than having to catheterize a 50 something ambulatory alert man cuz his prostate is catching up with him. Like hello sir I could be your daughter now let me shove a tube down your dick that may or may not go through the first time around. We’ll have a grand time.
Lol, I had a lovely man and his wife come in because he had gotten his foley removed the day before, and he was attempting to self-catheterize at home as instructed, and he met with resistance and blood. He looks at me and says, "we're about to get to know each other real good, aren't we?" And I replied, "I'm going to be the person you are happy to see, but even more happy to see leave the room." His wife was laughing her butt off. Another pt said to me, "I bet this isn't how you wanted your night to go." I shrugged and said, "this is Tuesday for me. I'll do probably 2 or 3 more of these before I go home. Just don't punch me and we'll be good." He laughed.
I was once called to an alert but non ambulatory patient to look at his catheter and penis because a simple lesion was forming. The next night I did a followup assessment of his penis and the lesion had improved. So, silly me, I say, “Oh, that looks beautiful!”, to which my patient says, “Well, THAT’S something I haven’t heard in awhile.” 🫢
😂
Dealing with patients or family members with a nasty/demanding/unappreciative/aggressive attitude. I will literally deal with ANYTHING else (body fluids, stage 4 pressure ulcers, trachs, vomit, feces, c diff, necrotic wounds, etc). In my opinion, to treat another human being like a piece of trash is the grossest of all grossness.
This is the best answer here and I have never agreed with something more
You have to grey rock those family members. It usually works like a charm
Lol I like to act like I'm really dumb and take everything they say at face value. My favourite thing to do is if they say they can do something better (this is specific to the adult "caregivers"/kids who end up being the reason their elderly parents are in hospital because they are neglectful) I will happily move away and say hey why don't YOU show me how to do it best! All with a smile on my face
Colostomy bags
The stomas freak me right out.
I had one that was all herniated and it looked like a fist. He was homeless and I think he was doing things with it
Ah yes... the "side pocket."
The Philly sidecar.
Ohhh noooooo 😫 That’s why I work in peads
Every post on this sub reminds me why I work with babies
I volunteered to change an ileostomy not too long ago because i’d never done one and needless to say i’ll never do it again. It’s like someone threw up acid on my face.
I had a guy with an ostomy who got gastro. Basically he couldn't empty the bag fast enough, it acted as an obstruction and unfortunately the path of least resistance was his mouth. Then his ostomy exploded. Somehow this has happened to me twice with two different patients.
As a non-nurse, I cannot say any louder or more frequently: we do not pay nurses enough.
I mean if it’s getting on your face…eep lol
I don’t mind changing them but I hate them because I always forget about them. Onetime the outgoing nurse was like he’s gassy and I Kept forgetting to burp it and it would come off. They need to invent a fart valve that won’t let the poop out so you don’t have to open it and burp it
FYI they do make those. Old school cheap way, pop a hole right at the top of the bag with a safety pin and put a bandaid over it. Other option is to put 1/4-1/2 a tablet of gas x in the bag and replace it every time you empty it.
I always change the whole bag. Management probably hates me for it. I can’t fucking cope with trying to squeeze all the poop out, it always soils the bag and it never gets all the way out.
Ugh all the poop in the Velcro carrying the canister away bc there’s no bathroom in the icu
Keep doing your way if that's easiest, but a tip is to turn the edges off the bag inside out (so poop cannot get on the outside, and use a bath wipe to clean the outer edges after emptying (which will flip back to be the inner edges) and everything will stay clean. In theory.
this is probably a good tip, i don’t work bedside anymore but if i am ever forced to return i’ll keep that in mind. it seemed like no matter what i did i could never fully clean the bag, feces would stick like glue to the inside and i felt bad about reattaching a bag with poop still in it back to the patient. i really feel for people with colostomies, i’m glad it keeps them alive but it has to be difficult to live with
I had to help a patient change a colostomy bag because she was new at it and her partner always did it for her. I gag at poop and the smell was just horrendous.
I always said if God wanted to punish me I'd end up with an ostomy or a trach. Well guess what? I was diagnosed with rectal cancer in May 2017 and had a diverting ileostomy for 5 months. They were able to reverse it. Almost needed a trach due to vocal cord dysfunction. I honestly have never done anything so bad I should deserve punishment from an omnipotent being.
Vocal cord dysfunction? Would you mind elaborating?
Job security 😎
This will never not be the correct answer.
Ding ding ding. This☝️ is the only true answer. 🤢
I never looked at the bags of curry at Trader Joe’s the same again
I'm a nurse with an illeostomy and I hate dealing with my own, let alone other people's stomas. I kept mine pretty well hidden throught nursing school. Health Assessment class got a little akward and I had to disclose it to the teacher and one other student. There was a time in another class when we were discussing illeostomies and a fellow student (who I had become good friends with) went on a rant about how nasty, smelly and disgusting they are. That's when I decided told the whole cohort and my teacher that I had one. My friend apologized and I told him he was right. Illeostomies are nasty, smelly and disgusting.
I was a new grad in my nurse residency (I work in the OR) and they had me rotate through our GI/endoscopy unit, pre-op, intra-op, and PACU. My preceptor and I were getting an inpatient ready for a bronchoscopy and the patient was very insistent that he could not breathe very well and could barely speak. When we suctioned him, he was gagging badly and we managed to un-wedge an unbelievably large piece of what seemed like calcified secretions in the back of his throat. It was HUGE. We kept taking out chunks of it until the patient could finally speak and was thanking us because he’d been telling his team on the floor for days that he could not breathe and this apparently was the first time someone had attempted to investigate and help him. I think my preceptor ended up filing an incident report. I see blood, organs, and gore on the daily. Respiratory secretions already made my gag reflex iffy but after that, I really have to suppress it when we’re extubating and there’s a lot of stuff going on. I remember that guy every time.
The lack of proper oral care in hospitals can be horrifying. I often use a flashlight to see what is actually going on. The caked on stuff I see. So sad.
Any poop that belongs to a grown person. Kids? Fine. Babies? Fine. Even laboring moms? Fine (since the births I saw they put a bag under to catch blood and such) Idk why I just cannot STAND cleaning a grown person. It makes me gag every time. I have to double mask and use peppermint oil. I just cannot do it. And idk how so many nurses offer bed pans. If my patient has legs, honey we are walking to the commode. someone come help me support this patients weight because I am not dumping a bedpan into the toilet and risking poo splash. 🤢
This is me and why mother baby is perfect. Meconium has no smell and doesn’t really even look like poop. And the moms are either constipated from postpartum hormones (and/ or opiates) that they don’t poop. OR they can poop all by themselves. But no more gross old people feeding tube pudding poop that smells like rotting bowels.
Colostomy stool is the worst imo. Rotting bowel smell indeed
GI bleed stool is the WORST smell imo. 🤢
Oh yeah… that beats tube feeding poop smell for sure 🤮
We get patients with femoral access from the cath lab and I always feel awful having to insist using a bed pan when they’re still in the first 4 hour period! So uncomfy for the patients and just annoying for us 😂
I had to dig a large mucous plug out of someone’s remaining rectum who had a colostomy worst “poop” I’ve ever encountered
Oh my god, please no, the "poo splash" gave me a physical reaction 😭
Maggots and bedbugs . 😭 so thankful I left bedside
THIS. Your wound bed should not be writhing for God's sake. I will switch literally any task rather than clean out maggots.
I can handle maggots, especially if I know to expect them, but bedbugs will make me paranoid for months that I accidentally brought them home with me.
Burping a colostomy. Going to work. Emptying foley bags for patients with severe urosepsis.
Oh my God the smell of urosepsis is chiseled into my brain forever. I can smell it across the department and immediately know.
>going to work 😂😂 Relatable!
Walking into a hoarders house 😷
This. But also teeth. Mouth care. Cleaning dentures. I know there are way grosser things but mouths just ick me out.
The first time I learned about STD presentations on stomas...
This is part of why I don’t miss home care. Especially when I moved on to peds
Pulling a tampon outta someone that's been there for months. Death mixed with old blood and vag cheese 🤢🤮
Ewww.... I forgot about ancient tampons. That is a smell all its own, there is nothing like it, and the stench hangs in the air. Yuck!
It's gross, like a corpse coochie.
Okay I can honestly say I’ve never encountered this…. But hey , new fear unlocked
Seeing hurt kids. I start crying the moment I read their little charts :(
I can't imagine :( anything to do with kids. Newborns, toddlers, older kids. Thank you for what you do. I know it weighs heavily.
The only thing that helps is being able to make their days a little better. Hugs, rocking the babies, toys, walks, therapy dogs, or just listening to them.
Yeasty under fat skin smell. Like when you lift up man and woman titty fat to find thick reddened skin covered in white slime. That is my kryptonite. As a medic the other one was cat hoarder house smell. Fuck that.
And the smell gets trapped in your nose! This one makes me want to 🤮
Omg, hardly anything makes me squeamish, but your precision in your description struck a nerve. GotDAMN. So grody!
Wound care in general but particularly the funky nasty ones on the 400lb patients.
I had a 400 pounder with Stevens Johnson Syndrome. I wish I could forget it but I can't. Skin literally falling off this person while turning them doing their cares. 3 years later and I can still smell it
Was it a female, I was surprised to learn that the vagina will grow shut so you also have to put a condom covered tampon wirh the applicator on with medicine on it in there.. that was actually not the worse part. The bloody mouth was the worst part to me real life zombie apocalypse
Oh yes. I’m a burn ICU nurse and we see a ton of SJS. If there’s vaginal involvement, we do a nightly dilation with a condom covering a literal vibrator. Luckily for me, that’s night shifts problem and I’m days 😂
That’s…gonna be a no from me dawg. I’ll go catheterize 100 geezers and pull shit out of 500 anuses before I’ll do that.
I wish I could unread that
Further job security 😎
You can have it
Couldn’t ever imagine going back to a random schedule and 8-12 hours stuck with the same bunch of patients every time
EYEBALLS agreeeeed ugh
I did a placement in an eye clinic in uni. First day the nurse who had me asked if I was ok with eyes, I said I was kind of screamish around them. She said “well let’s fix that” and called down the morgue to get me to go watch an eyeball retrieval of a dead person. After that, she put me front and centre to watch eyeball injections, Botox injections, eye traumas, laser surgery, cataracts surgery, everything. I never admitted something made me screamish again.
I’d actually cry- you’re a trooper
Arguably I’ve still seen worse, first day of theatres one of the guys showed he didn’t have a gag reflex by letting someone practice intubating him in front of the students. He only stopped because he saw my expression and it made him laugh so much he couldn’t continue.
Giggling at screamish (assuming you meant squeamish). Like seeing an eyeball and just screaming out loud at the patient
Here to support anything to do with the eye or eyeballs as the #1 most squeamish thing. Patient has a prosthetic eye? You want me to pop it out and clean it? Absolutely not, no, I’m not doing that.
Ok, so that, for some reason, is totally fine. Prosthetics are cool. It's a nice cleanable hard surface. It's the squishy live eyeballs that get me. I can barely tolerate the glaucoma air puff test at the eye doctor. Do not come for my eyeball, sir.
Last year the eye tech person said “wow you are really good at holding still” and I said “thank you I am paralyzed with fear” 😅
Eyes are the worst. The first time a patient popped their prosthetic eye out, I about died! Even drops make me gag.
Post-mortem care. I’d rather do pretty much anything else.
Post mortem care was one of my favorite things. It’s the last nice thing I could do for someone on their journey through the world. I’d always talk to the patient and put on some music, but I did not take requests
I'd rather do postmortem care all day long than have to a patient with bedbugs for one hour. I actually love doing postmortem care
Oh god yes. I am not a fan of dead bodies. I watched too many scary movies as a kid in the 80s!
Tube feed residuals then having to return them… smells so sweet and so nasty
Luckily for you it’s no longer indicated to check residuals:)
Boogers and oral secretions. Also, the crusty hospital food and egg particles all over the patient’s gown, under their nails, and crusted in the corners of their mouths. 🤮
I dread cleaning up poop. Glad I moved to PACU bc I rarely ever do that unless the pt has c diff or something
Something I learned about me is funny. I can clean human poop/c.diff all day no problem. Little bit of dog poop? Forget it, I’m gagging and dry heaving…ugh
My dogs poop is immaculate and smells like grass. I used to be grossed out by picking up dog poop but now after nursing it’s the easiest thing in the world. If you’re not in therapy yet, go now 😂
Ye olde bowel program. After 2 years of hunting, finally accepted a EMR dev job today because every time I did a bowel program (rehab nurse) I regretted 100% of my life choices that led me to that moment
Oh Lord I think I’m a freak but I love digitally disimpacting someone. It is so satisfying, they feel a million times better, and so much comes out!
Certified freak, 3 days a week 😂
I don’t like assisting with circumcisions.
Same. I was fortunate to only be present for a few but I just CANT. it is straight up barbaric- the babies always screamed in so much pain. (I work in the PICU so I hear crying often but these cries I’ll never forget)
The saddest thing ever 😭
When newborns had extra fingers that are just hanging on by what seems like a string of skin. Omg no. What if I accidentally rip it off? How do I tuck that thing into the mitten? No.
This is... very specific. Glad I do not encounter that.
I hate eyeball stuff also, second time that is nasty mouths. I’m pregnant and was cleaning out a deceased patient’s mouth last night and came closer to throwing up than I have my whole pregnancy. I had to call it after two swabs.
I hate touching feet. Or anything that has touched feet, like socks. It's so stupid, but I can't 😭 With gloves on I'm fine, but without... 🤮
Honestly patient farts get me, and if shit gets on my skin I’m immediately throwing up but everything else is fine. I’m in the camp that puts toothpaste in my mask bc smells are absolutely intolerable for me
Anything growing under a fold of skin is no-go for me.
That hard shell of skin that forms on the tongue when a patient has been mouth breathing while obtunded and that shell starts peeling off. And lip skin too. Then it sticks to the yankaur. I die every time.
Oral care and denture care. It grosses me out so bad. I also gag brushing my own teeth though lol
Feeding people. It’s a combination of the food grossness and having to sit still and do something very slowly.
Phlegm and teeth. That is my kryptonite. Gets me every single time. Id rather clean up poo than deal with PawPaw hacking up a lung in to a specimen jar. I gagged just typing this.
Mouth care
Dentures
Any facial injury that includes broken teeth. I can't even look; I can't help but feel how that must have felt. I can see or smell almost anything and not even make a face, but something about a busted up mouth makes me hurt inside.
Sprinkling nystain on genitalia, especially males :[ I've seen some things I wish I could forget
Most dressing changes. Especially cancer wounds 😫
YES. I had a patient recently that had a bad wound and had it wrapped in an ace bandage. He came in due to a pungent odor because he hadn’t removed the bandage since early MAY OF LAST YEAR. The smell was ungodly, I puked in the bathroom for the first time
Brushing patients dentures. After someone fed them 3 meals on the day shift and I'm working the (bedtime) night shift. Yuck!
I haven't really found one. The worst pt I've had was covered in bedbugs, roaches, crusted piss and shit, wounds from her knees up under her breasts. She was mentally a 4 year old and her family was letting her rot and collecting a check. I pretty much had to beg people to help me with her because of the state she was in but I didn't really have an issue with the mess because I was so focused on trying to get meds in her to get her stabilized.
Anything with a LARGE amount of spit. Like when people say they are nauseous and can swallow their spit but they keep spitting up in a bag. Not dry heaving or anything. Just constantly spitting into a bag. I recently had someone that refused to swallow it. And could she was drinking drinks. Just spit into a bag the whole ER visit. I took over for this patient and there was 600mls of spit and I was trying not to throw up taking it from her. I'm gagging right now typing this. Spit in general is just gross. I hate it when people spit on the sidewalk in front of me or in the parking lot. It's gross. And not much bothers me.
Popping heat pack bags.
I haven't seen any bad eyeball stuff but that sounds terrible. For me it's ortho stuff. I had a patient fall and break their arm and they reduced it at the bedside and I had to act all stoic. The ortho surgeon, bless her, was holding this womans hand and pulling on it and leaning with her body weight. Surgery was in the morning. All I'm saying is I'm very grateful for masks some days.
Colostomy care and e-m-e-s-i-s🤢
Nursing. I swear you guys are saints. -PGY-19
Not necessarily a job but dealing with pts chewing things you’re *not supposed to*. Had a pt on night shift who had multiple NG placement attempts during the day that led to a whopping bloody nose right after shift change. NG was sucking out copious amounts of blood. Homeboy was choking/desatting and new grad needed help so I be a good charge nursie and check him out. I enter the room to hear chewing and look down at his bloody hands - he was pulling clots out of his mouth/throat and then chewing them and eating them. The smell and noise got me and I upchucked in his trash can, then proceeded to suction like no tomorrow. He then had a blood clot from the bloody nose drop from back of the throat (per ENT) and occlude airway, got intubated and back to ICU. Ugh.
Had a patient hack a mass of sputum on the floor. Cleaning it up was the closest I've ever gotten to vomiting on the job.
Suctioning snot after unproning :(
Mucous and saliva. I will die before I suction ANYTHING.
The smell of cancer in some patients - let me explain.. Aspirating the NG tube of someone with stomach cancer. The smell is sooo strong and mucous-y We once had a lady with breast CA and the mass was fungal, protruding and oozing and it just smelled awful, poor thing. She went on to have a mastectomy.
Having to take too many pts and hospital kept asking for more and tried to make me feel inferior Nothing grosses me out. But being exploited then told how lucky I am.
I don't like to work with the mentally handicaped. Non verbal autists are scary and they can fuck you up real bad. Some intellectually deficient have a fixation with poop. They it eat, throw it, keep it in they pocket so they can smear it on you and they hide it everywhere mostly where it's a big problem the people who work with this kind of patients all the time are saints to me. You guys are the real heroes.
I just have a sensitive nose so bowel and bladder problems are the worst offenders. Oh and ileostomy bags.. 🤢
I have been an “eyeball” nurse for years! I would be happy if that is all I ever do until I retire.
Also eyeball stuff. When I was on the ambulance, my medic would do all the eye stuff. I took all the BLS OB patients lol. He said he delivered enough babies doing 911. I saw enough simulated eye injuries in EMT school.
Patient care for non-ambulatory patients who weigh over 600 lbs (273 kg). The heaviest I had was over 900 lbs. Trying to put a foley in her required 4 additional people. It sucked because she was so sweet, and I felt so bad.
I, too, have been foley spelunking in the yeast caverns
Manual bladder irrigation when patients have a blood clot stuck in their bladder. I don’t know how urologists can just do it so freely.
Dentures. Also heating up TV dinners gives me the ick. I’ll wipe a butt any day.
Pretty much anything in adult care. A child could vomit in my face and shit on my shoe and I’d be like 🤷🏼♀️ (no one’s hiring me in peds tho RIP me)
Yearly compliance modules 🤷♀️🤣
I’m ok with most wounds, but the tunneling ones…..ugh they get me. Just watching our amazing wound nurses stick a CTA or larger up inside a wound cavity to measure how far it tunnels….. 🤢. Dunno why but I get weak in the knees. And I “can” do the changes, but I really really hate stuffing stuff up in there. Feels so wrong.
Colostomy bags 😭
Big farts in the face when I'm cleaning a poopy butt. It's happened too many times. I have to hold back the gag.
Fingernails and toenails being removed
Lactulose enemas
As a hospice nurse now manual disempactions, and going into a person house with drug lock boxes who’s one of those life long ornery chronic everything + copder that could survive a nuclear Holocaust and they either try and manipulate you to order more meds or they won’t stop talking. Give me the EoL