What is your Achilles heel?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Let me start by saying I am a last semester student. I have also been a tech at the hospital for 2 years.

Give me poo, vomit, anything... but please oh please not sputum....

I am desperately trying to get over my hatred of phlegm. Crazy right? Trach patients, I can't even.

Obviously, I am perfectly professional in the room, and care for these patients like any other, but seriously, I cannot be the only one, right?

Does anything gross you out, about the job, at this point?

Poop, puke, sputum, I can handle all that. Ive never had to deal with the eye stuff but I think I would be ok. What really revolts me to the point I hold my breathe and leave the room is skin flakes. OMMMGG when I have to pull off a sock or change a bed and all those tiny skin flakes go flying I lose my mind. I feel like they are in my eye lashes, my hair, my nose, my mouth. I feel like I inhale them all. They look like bats in a frenzy trying to leave a cave. Thinking about it makes me gag.

Specializes in retired LTC.

One ting that grosses me out - visibly identifiable gastric contents (ie FOOD) coming through a colostomy!

Another thing - those really deep stage 4 coccyx/buttocks draining wounds on sweaty diabetic pts. The odor is like someone decaying from the inside out. Those pts just don't heal and the wounds are freq infected (pseudomonas A. does make me gag).

I personally have not had anythign come up that I couldnt "handle", but several of the other RNs have problems with phlem. Im ok with c diff, Abdominal bleeds, phlem, vommit, stools of every shape and form, etc. I guess the worst thing I have had to deal with is Bad wounds with gangrene (especialy in pressure ulsers that have basicaly taken over a pt) :( . Its not that I cant deal with them but I look at them and just think man this just sucks.

The only other "situations" I dont think I could handle is child burns or Children dying. I think that would be the worst thing I could imagine coming through our doors. Not sure how I would handle that.

Specializes in ED.

nasty feet, nasty feet, busted teeth. The only thing to really make me come close to heaving was green bile while I was pregnant.

Full Sputum pots....ick, ick, ick!

Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

Even after 35 years.....I don 't like eyes....but sputum drives me NUTS! especially when there is Pseudomonas and C-diff.

Specializes in ICU.
I thought mine was sputum until last week when I had to empty a JP drain from a renal abcess. Holy mother of God, give me a fresh trach any day over that!

I can feel ya there. When I was a surgical tech many years ago there was a patient who had a pilonidal cyst that had tracked up the to anal vault. It stunk up the whole OR. It was one of the worst smells I have every smelt.

Specializes in ICU.

When i worked in surgery and had to do enucleation and then they would put the eyeball on the mayo I would have to cover it up or i would faint.

Sputum.

Give me poop any day.

I shudder to pick up a dirty wet Kleenex filled with congealed sputum. Ewwwwww

Specializes in MICU - CCRN, IR, Vascular Surgery.
Omg the sound the suction makes when the phlegm is so thick that it completely clogs it up for a second before getting sucked through to freedom. I want to gag every time.

I gagged while reading that! Twice at work recently situations like this have caused me to dry heave. I too have problems with eye injuries and broken bones. The other night we had a pt with an old poorly healed wrist fracture, so it was like their wrist just flopped about and I could NOT handle being on that side of the bed. Luckily it wasn't my pt and I was just helping with the admission.

Specializes in MDS/ UR.

Wow, I am surprised that eyeballs make for such squick.

Thank heavens I no longer work a hospital floor, because the one thing that I gagged over every time was SLIMY YELLOW FUNGAL CRUD in fat folds.

ECCChhhhh!

You know the kind, morbidly obese patient and you're trying to figure out WHERE that smell is coming from and you lift a 40 pound slab of abdominal fat and find.....a village.

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