stinky patient pet peeve

[Fruit Sucker]

It really irritates me when we get to the floor, get patient assignments, and go in to see patients that have not been cleaned for at least a day. I'm not talking about diapers that need to be changed, I'm talking the entire patient is stinky and there are techs/cna's standing around. This really grinds my gears.

Do people working as nurses have this problem? If so, what do you do? Can you write up the techs for this?

I had a patient the other day who was stinky as all get out, Foley bag was full, and he was slumped down in his bed. The nurse is busting his butt trying to get all the medications out, and there are techs standing around talking. I say something to my clinical instructor and she says, "sometimes you'll have that, it's a game where they want to see if you'll do it for them." Can't people like this be punished?

[MargaretMuslima]

Even it wasn't my assigned skill for the day, I'd still do it. If you see a problem, why not take the initiative and try to fix it? Or call the CNA to assist you if you don't have that much time or it's a 2 person assist patient. That's one of the ingredients that makes a nurse truly exceptional to work with in my opinion, the initiative and the absence of the "thats not my job" bug.

[artisticmind]

seeing as how Nursing school is pretty fresh in my mind since I graduated just over a year ago, you have another thing coming to you! Majority of programs require you to be a licensed CNA before allowing you to to even take your first nursing course, why? Because you preform CNA duties!!! You have to know how to properly take vital signs, reposition patients, clean them and make their beds and the list goes on and on. In the first semester of our program we were assigned 1 patient as our responsibility from 7am when we hit the floor until 2pm when we left. Anything they needed during that time was our job- wiping their butt, walking them to the dining hall if we were at the LTC facility, setting up their tray after dietary delivered it, bathing them, adjusting tele patches, emptying their garbage cans (that certainly is more of a housekeeping job than an RN job). Their call light went off- we answered it, us lowly "RN students." After 1st semester we got to do all that plus charting on 2 assigned patients. and answer call lights that were not assigned to us. and help our fellow students out. plus pass meds and explain in detail what the med does, class, side effects, and adverse effects in front of the patient to our instructor. Your program sounds like a walk in the park compared to what 95% or more of us went through.

[missmollie, ADN, BSN, RN]

I was nice before, but now...you're just digging your own grave.

I asked my professor twice what I should do about my patient's foley bag and lack of hygiene, and she said, "do you think it just happened before you walked in? No, someone let it go on all day like that."

You asked what you should do about the bag? You are kidding, right? You change it because if it becomes full, it can back up which then leads to an infection. You want to nurse your patient back to health, not figure out who is at fault for something as petty as a full foley bag. You left this foley bag full while asking your instructor what to do because...what, you wanted proof that it was full?

I in fact did some of the CNA's REALLY GROSS toileting assignments because he looked straight at the nurse, smirked, and said he couldn't do it because he didn't know how to deal with it.

CNA assignments are well within your ability, as a NURSE, to do.

I have however many patients my nurse is assigned to, meaning I have a crapload of medication to get out that barely gets out on time.

You earlier wrote 'patient', indicating one. Now you're doling out medications left and right? First, this should be done with your instructor, and second, she has to give everyone the chance to pass meds. There is a 2 hour window in which to get meds passed, which would mean that she would be busy passing meds with everyone, not just you. Doesn't jive.

Well, that is not acceptable professional behavior.

What's not acceptable is your behavior. You put yourself above that of the patient. You put your patient in potential harms way to prove that the foley bag was not emptied, and you are not qualified to pass medications on so many patients. That's a potential error just waiting to happen. You have decided that these "gross" jobs are not yours to do.

Grow up. It's not about you right now, and in the clinical setting it should never be about you.

[SionainnRN]

The OP continues to disgust me with her description of her patients and their basic needs. None of the expectations of nursing students could be considered hazing and to think that wanting nursing students to give basic care is hazing just goes to show the huge disconnect in her thinking. None of us have a problem with our reading comprehension, we are addressing everything you say, you just don't like the answers. I have literally never seen a thread so unanimous in their opinion, never.

Bottom line: you disgust me.

[Loo17]

Well, I can't speak to where you went to school 18 years ago, but today's instructors are not teaching students how to make beds and give sponge baths anymore. As I said, I follow the instructions I'm given BY MY PROFESSORS, not by some hospital staff members who think someone else should do their work for them. Nor do the nurses on the unit have time to do CNA work. Maybe this is a regional thing, I don't know. I've heard hospitals in more rural areas don't even have CNA's. But I do know that I go to school to learn, and missing out on inservices, missing meds, and missing actual student duties because I have to do someone else's work is not acceptable.

Maybe your nursing program is different than every program I have encountered recently in my urban (not rural) area. The nursing students provide ALL care for their assigned patient that shift which includes personal care, wound care, meds, and assessments. It is a very important thing to learn even if you wont necessarily be doing it every day as a nurse.

As a student you do not care for a full patient assignment and therefor should have the time to provide complete care for your patients.

[sirI, MSN, APRN, NP]

Thread closed for staff review.