I'm not "WIPING BUTTS"

Nurses General Nursing

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I know there have been numerous threads about this already, but this is more for a "vent" then a discussion/debate. I have a friend who is currently a medical assistant. She wants to go to nursing school, to make more money. I have no problem with anyone wanting to make a better living. I suggested to her the other day that she consider working in a hospital to gain some experience and see what the "real world" of nursing is about. She replied that she would love to but she "doesn't want to wipe butts for a fulltime job." I told her she better not go to nursing school :rotfl:

She claims that she will deal with the "butt wiping" for school, but not as a fulltime job! I mean WHAT DO YOU THINK NURSES DO!?!?!??!?! Prance around in cute uniforms and hand out meds?????? This is NOT the glamorous life!!! It is dirty, filthy, smelly, sometimes just plan disgusting, but it is HUMANITY. She seems to think that once she is a nurse she doesn't have to assist patients with ADL's because thats "not her job." I can't tell you how many bedpans and "butts I have wiped" in the past week. No, its not my priority, but am I going to walk away from a patient when they ask for a bedpan when it only takes 2 seconds??? NO! I'm SORRY but I don't think we need people in nursing with this mentality of being "above that." If you can't see passed the BUTT WIPING and see it for what really is...which is giving a human being their DIGNITY and RESPECT than you DO NOT BELONG HERE!!!!!!!

I guess I should just let it go and let her be ignorant. I doubt she'll make it passed the first semester with that attitude anyway.

Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.
This is too broad a statement-and one that is not always true! I am a younger nurse and have seen nurses both with little experience and some with 15 to 20 plus years experiience walk out of a room and page a cna to clean the patient while they go about doing most the time nothing-but seriously enough on the younger nurses thing! Believe it or not their is some of us who care and do our job to the absolute best of our ability-that includes cleaning my own patients!

I don't here it from the younger nurses either. In fact, I've never heard a nursing student say this, old or young....never. I'm realtively sure most nursing students understand cleaning patients up is part of the job. It's taught right up there with bed baths and bed making the first few days of nursing school.

The only thing I've heard remotely close is a coworker new grad recently said "I didn't go to school to do tech work", meaning she wasn't going to do their job. I think it was a round about way of being assertive to our techs, which we have to be sometimes. But I've cleaned a few butts with her, so I know she doesn't have a problem with it.

Some people don't like it and don't want to do it. There is nothing wrong with that. I think those of us who do choose jobs where we have to wipe butts need to get off of our high horse and think we're more superior than the nurse who doesn't want to. Not all people want to wipe butts and it doesn't mean they are less of a nurse than myself who has no problem with it. They can have the non-butt-wiping-jobs and we should allow them their feelings. Maybe it's their truth and their reality that they didn't go to school to wipe butts. Personally, I didn't either, but choose a job where I have to.

Now if a butt needs wiping and it's their job and they refuse to or leave them for a tech to do, I have a huge problem with that. Completely different scene.

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actually, i'm in long term care, i make 90k, and i never wipe butt, ever. i haven't wiped one butt in the last 6 months.

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This thread reminds me of when I was in my first clinical with this nice little Indian lady (nothing against people from India, just painting a picture). When my instructor was discussing cleaning up feces, she said, "doesn't housekeeping do that?"

I have had patients that were surprised that as a nurse I would help them to the toilet or empty the urinal or clean up after they have been incontinent. They have said "nurses don't do this" and I have a few CNAs that are surprised when I clean up a patient and tell them that the patient had a BM and I cleaned it up for them. I am saddened by the rep we nurses are getting because of the ones that can't do patient care. It is about more then passing pills and paperwork. It is patient care, as areas.

You know what? Sometimes I even have residents that are embarrassed that I'm helping them clean up! I was passing meds one morning, and this sweet old lady said, "uh, oh, I think I'm having a bm". So I popped on some gloves, grabbed some stuff and came back in. She looked kind of nervous and was like, "oh, are all the girls busy?"

The regular nurse on that floor doesn't do "aide work" at all. When I oriented with her, if someone asked for a bedpan etc., she actually would say "put your call light on". :trout:

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
Hear this everyday from the younger nurses. Just smile and remember, every dog has it's day.

In my experience, it's not the younger ones that say this.

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I worked with somebody who would spend 15 minutes looking for a PCA to do an accucheck for her because she was "too busy" to do it herself.

And with that attitude, she's lucky some PCA was unlucky enough to be found by her in only 15 minutes.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

The last night I worked, I was slammed as a CNA. I had 14 patients, 2 admits, 3 patients in restraints. I hardly got to sit down to catch my breath, let alone sit down and chart.

My charge nurse came up to me and said, "Let me know if you need any help. Help with vitals, or turning or pulling up, or cleaning anyone."

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My charge nurse came up to me and said, "Let me know if you need any help. Help with vitals, or turning or pulling up, or cleaning anyone."

I often find my nurse manager in patient's rooms (YES, I said MANAGER!) all gloved up doing patient care: cleaning up, positioning, making beds!!! I have so much respect for her for that.

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
I often find my nurse manager in patient's rooms (YES, I said MANAGER!) all gloved up doing patient care: cleaning up, positioning, making beds!!! I have so much respect for her for that.

My NM on the floor i used to work on pitched in on anything without even being asked to. It's no wonder she's won Manager of the Year several times.

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Look I am not a big fan of wiping my own butt, it's gross and kind of degrading. The only thing worse would be if someone had to do it for me. Patient care is about the patient not about the caregivers feeling toward certain body functions.

Now a quick story from the streets to lighten the mood. We had a very pleasant elderly lady at home who was in some mild medical distress. She was non ambulatory and needed to go from the bedroom to the living down a hall we could not fit the cot down. So we did an underarm/leg carry to move her which unfortunately left her bum exposed.

After the move down the hall to the cot, I notice a large BM lying in the hall with a boot print in the middle of it. I do the mandatory quick look of my boots and find nothing, I then point it out to my partner. She does the quick look turns pale white and asks the patient if she has a cat or dog to which the patient says no. My partner, who is now extremely pale and near vomiting discreetly limps out of the house and cleans her boot off in the grass. My partner who was very clean and fastidious ended up throwing the boots away.

:uhoh3:

Peace,

Tripps

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

I work with a nurse with that kind of attitude, for example last night she was in the residents room setting up his tube feeding, when he knocked his urinal on the floor, rather than just picking it up she went out to the nurses station paged me saying room_ needs me immediately. She then went back into the room to finish the feeding. A dew weeks ago I had a resident who was coughing up phelm after dinner, I brought him in front of the nurses station so we could keep an eye on him. I had to go feed another resident, when she pages me that MR X needed me. He had coughed up more phlem and she wouldn't wipe his face, she was sitting at the desk watching him, but wouldn't help him.

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I work with a nurse with that kind of attitude, for example last night she was in the residents room setting up his tube feeding, when he knocked his urinal on the floor, rather than just picking it up she went out to the nurses station paged me saying room_ needs me immediately. She then went back into the room to finish the feeding. A dew weeks ago I had a resident who was coughing up phelm after dinner, I brought him in front of the nurses station so we could keep an eye on him. I had to go feed another resident, when she pages me that MR X needed me. He had coughed up more phlem and she wouldn't wipe his face, she was sitting at the desk watching him, but wouldn't help him.

Over the years I've been peed on, thrown up on, etc. so many times - nothing bothers me any more - that type of nurse would absolutely drive me insane!:stone

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Who does she think is going to wipe her butt one day? PATHETIC.

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