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 ICU, PICC Nurse, Nursing Supervisor.

she has a reality check on the way!!!

update: today she further explains to me that she wants to do something "upscale" when she becomes a nurse.....:lol2: i mean what the hell does that mean!?!?!? "nurse" and "upscale" are not two words that correlate! i guess she thinks that the richer you are the more pleasant your bodily fluids??? :chuckle

ughh, society has such a distorted view of nursing. for now on, i'm just going to nod and smile

Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
she has a reality check on the way!!!

and if for no other reason than that, you can nod & smile!

Specializes in FNP, Peds, Epilepsy, Mgt., Occ. Ed.

I'd love to know what 'upscale' means. Advanced practice?

Is she under the delusion that NPs, midwives, or CRNAs don't do anything "hands on?"

In fact, someone mentioned earlier that the NP role is one in which nurses don't do much hands on. I'm an NP, and I disagree.

No, I may not clean BM very much. I do things like female pelvic exams, male and female rectal exams, clean ear wax out of ears, remove various objects from various body orfices (including "forgotten" tampons), do breast exams which include palpating for axillary nodes, do male hernia exams, do diabetic foot exams, and basically "look, listen, and feel" all day.

I also get to hear a lot of very personal intimate details about lots of things I don't particularly wish to know.

CRNA's get to poke tubes into people, not to mention get to be responsible for seeing that their patients wake up after surgery.

You can't get much more 'hands on' than the Nurse Midwife I once saw up to her elbow inside a fresh postpartum patient, doing massage on a floppy uterus while the patient bled more than anybody else I've ever seen, including an arterial laceration.

Too, just because you see your patients in a clinic or office and not a hospital doesn't mean that they all come in fresh as a daisy, either. On occasion I've had to leave the exam room door open to be able to breathe and not gag.

Doesn't feel real 'upscale' to me.

Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.
I'd love to know what 'upscale' means. Advanced practice?

Is she under the delusion that NPs, midwives, or CRNAs don't do anything "hands on?"

In fact, someone mentioned earlier that the NP role is one in which nurses don't do much hands on. I'm an NP, and I disagree.

No, I may not clean BM very much. I do things like female pelvic exams, male and female rectal exams, clean ear wax out of ears, remove various objects from various body orfices (including "forgotten" tampons), do breast exams which include palpating for axillary nodes, do male hernia exams, do diabetic foot exams, and basically "look, listen, and feel" all day.

I also get to hear a lot of very personal intimate details about lots of things I don't particularly wish to know.

Doesn't feel real 'upscale' to me.

I'm not an NP but I have worked in a clinic with NPs (community health ctr)and can testify that there is still plenty of stuff happenin' that no one would consider 'upscale.' Of all the things santhony mentioned, I think ear wax was my least favorite.

Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

I mean WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!?!?!? "nurse" and "upscale" are NOT two words that correlate!

Not unless she plans on using 100% silk washrags :lol_hitti .

UPDATE: today she further explains to me that she wants to do something "upscale" when she becomes a nurse.....:lol2: I mean WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!?!?!? "nurse" and "upscale" are NOT two words that correlate! I guess she thinks that the richer you are the more pleasant your bodily fluids??? :chuckle

ughh, society has such a DISTORTED view of nursing. For now on, I'm just going to nod and smile

Just smile and nod....that IS the only way to deal with this silliness. Don't get angry, just chuckle to yourself that she is going to have one hell of a brick fall on her head in the form of Reality 101.

You know, I'd be interested in following her career....after all, if she finds something "upscale" that requires no actual messiness in nursing, I might be inclined to follow! :D The non-messy jobs are paper-pushers (and she needs to be experienced before doing that anyway). They aren't exactly "upscale"....wonder what she means by that?

HEY, I'VE GOT IT!!! Guys, the "upscale" nursing job is being a nurse character on a soap opera! You know the ones: perfect makeup that took an hour to apply, perfect hair that could go up in smoke anywhere near an open flame, and perfectly cute "nursey" outfits, LOL!! Yep, sign me up :)

Specializes in Emergency Room.
On the other hand, aren't you guys tired of people thinking that's all we do is wipe butts.

thank you x3 tweety. i take good care of my patients, but i don't consider "wiping butts" as part of my job description. it just comes with bed side nursing. i am an educated professional. i think it is demeaning for any of us (CNA's included) to consider "wiping butts" as an actual job. the statement "WHAT DO YOU THINK NURSES DO!?" is a little irritating to me because we already have a hard enough time just trying to educated the public about our profession. little do people know "wiping butts" is the easy part.

Specializes in ICU;CCU;Telemetry;L&D;Hospice;ER/Trauma;.

me thinks she will be wearing more than just egg on her face....ahem.

Ok...I have to admit here...that is a huge reason why I want to work with infants...to me, baby diapers, throw up, etc. are different than adult. It's just a "hang-up" of mine...and I am hoping, very sincerely to get over it.

However, knowing this, if I worked with adults, I also would never, ever accept a job, and expect this task to be 100% delegated to CNA's or especially ask another RN to do it! If you don't expect to do all tasks of the job, then you shouldn't take it.

:bow: :bow: :bow:

Specializes in Psychiatric.

The butt-wiping, I don't mind one little bit...now...anything having to do with a trach or somebody's eyeballs, and I'm gagging...isn't that silly?? However, I WILL do it...and if I can't, I will trade patients with somebody who can...dunno why I have such a thing about trachs and eyeballs..but butts? No problem! LOL

And I gotta tell ya, psych isn't as 'hands on' as some other stuff, but I have had some nasty stuff thrown at me!:trout:

Specializes in Rodeo Nursing (Neuro).

When I was in psych clinicals, I was assigned to a patient so depressed that she wanted to know if she could just go in her brief, instead of getting up to the bathroom. I coaxed, cajolled, and assisted her to the toilet, and cleaned her up, afterward. (In addition to her depression, she had pretty severe Parkinson's, so wiping herself would have been problematic without the depression.)

Later, in post-conference, I was citing the incident as an example of her lack of energy, and one of my classmates, a young man in his early 20's--a frat rat and usually as un-serious as I was in my early 20's, remarked, "So, basically, you're the only one of us who got to do any 'real nursing' today."

While I do not endorse the implication that psych nursing interventions are less than "real nursing," I did think it illustrated how much our attitudes had changed over our first year of school.

I can't say I particularly enjoy wiping butts, but it doesn't often gross me out, it is a good excuse to check a butt, and I do feel a certain pride when prim little old ladies decide they would rather let me help them toilet than wait for an aide or a female nurse. I do wish they'd learn to time their BMs for moments when I didn't have four other things I needed to do. I have a bad feeling that patients get conditioned so that the sight of a nurse entering the room stimulates peristalsis.

I just hope there is a caring, compassionate nurse around when and if I ever need my butt wiped.

It's annoying to hear that some nurses just go into this field for the money.

Treat each patient as if they were your parent or relative. That has always been my motto.

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