What Is Your Most Gross, Yucky, Disgusting Nursing Horror Story?

Here is my most gross, yucky, disgusting nursing story! Nurses Humor Article

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I was working a night shift on a tele floor as a new Nurse.

We had this one poor old lady who was confused and was restrained as usual for her safety. She was our designated resident nightmare geri from hell, so she was placed near the Nurse's station.

So we are chilling out at the Nurse's station, chatting and trying to get through another night...

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see our lady in question standing in the dimly lit doorway of her room!

I instantly leap out and run to her. As I approach her, she appears to be falling towards me, so I meet her in a bear hug...my arms around her waste, and her arms around my shoulders.

As I catch the lady, I notice a very strong smell of feces, and I feel something warm on my hands, arms and shoulders...

My fellow heroes come in behind me, and as the lights are turned on, my worst fears are instantly realized.

Yes, I caught the poor old lady with a good old bear hung football catch, but I was also covered in the lady's feces.

As I look at her, she has feces smeared all over her arms and hands... (and even her face!)

And of course, now so did I! :D

Specializes in acute care.

This isn't nearly as bad as a lot of what is posted here, but I just had to share. In my first semester med/surg clinical I was on a general surg floor--lots of abdominal operations and the like. My patient one day had just had surgery to debride necrotizing pancreatitis, and had (if I recall correctly) five different drains in his upper abdomen, draining bilious drainage into colostomy bags. And this was quite a copious amount of drainage, requiring the bags to be emptied frequently. So in the morning my instructor came in to help me with the bed bath etc. and showed me how to empty the colostomy bags as some of them were starting to fill up. She got a specimen cup out of the bathroom (about the size of a urine cup, as I recall) and proceeded to demonstrate opening the bag and emptying it into the cup. Only problem was, the cup was a bit small for the amount of material in the bag and overflowed onto the bed. Fortunately, we hadn't changed the sheets yet, so we finished emptying the drains and cleaning him up, then did the bed. As we were repositioning him once the clean sheets were on, one of the bags, which was already getting full, sprang a leak, spilling bile onto the patient, the bed and the floor (and almost onto my shoe as well). Turns out the seal between the bags and the skin was a bit problematic because of their close proximity to one another and the consequent difficulty getting them well adhered all around. At this point, the patient was in so much pain despite his pain meds that we decided he wouldn't tolerate being moved around to change the sheets yet again, so we cleaned him up but had to cover the mess in the bed with Chux pads and a towel until later. This turned out to be just as well, since there was plenty more leakage throughout the day--the ostomy nurse spent a lot of time in that room trying to get things under control, which she finally was able to do, and I was kept busy just staying on top of emptying the bags so they wouldn't explode! I'm sure I'll have yuckier stories as I get more experience, but I saw this thread again and remembered that I had something to add.

Don't have to think back too far for a gross one....hold those snacks kids...Patient s/p infection to abd incision (had colon surgery). Noticed another site above this to right side of incision, soft/tan area. Took a sterile q tip to check this site, popped right open and then literally squirted yellow thin drainage out and over onto floor. As I am opening up 4x4's, I notice his cat is now under there, you guessed it. I almost lost my lunch for the very first time. That is one image I hope diminishes in time! Of course he chased the cat away. Funny thing is that cat never came out before, now I will make sure it is secured in the future. Seen the patient since then, and he is now healing well, on levaquin with no further drainage.

Oh Lordy. He was a Hep C/HIV + patient, R hemipelvectomy, double-ended ostomy (never seen one like it since) on R lower abdomen with a massive abdominal wound covered in wound vac. His abdomen was seamed and lined from dozens of previous surgeries - there wasn't an inch of smooth skin, had actual trenches running across his abdomen from site to site. His colostomy was squirting out copious amounts of liquid stool. The wound vac was sucking. He springs a leak from his colostomy and the liquid stool followed a trench across his abdomen and got into his wound vac. I was a new nurse of about 5 or 6 months and about 4 months pregnant at this point. I thought I would die. I was also a float nurse at this point and not that familiar with the floor. I got the floating nurse out there to come in with me. Which is your priority? You've got the squirting ostomy and the massive wound vac (meaning about 12 inches by about 10 inches). We got to work on the wound vac, thinking it would be good to get the stool out of the open wound. I'm handing the floating nurse gauze and saline to clean out the wound with one hand while frantically wiping the stool away with a towel with the other, because he just keeps coming and flowing through the canals straight towards the wound vac. Then the sponge and sheet after sheet after sheet of the Tegaderm stuff to make a seal, tucked into the canals and craters in his abdomen. We'd been in there close to 2 hours by the time we finished with the wound vac. Two other nurses (the charge and my preceptor) came in to shoo the two of us off to lunch. I came back from my hour lunch break (this was an exceptional hospital that took really good care of the nurses, especially the float ones) and they had just finished changing the colostomy bags. I checked this patient every 15 minutes (no exaggeration) for the rest of my shift to make sure the colostomy didn't spring another leak. What do you do when there's no smooth skin to attach anything to? It was one of the worst experiences of my new nursing career.

Specializes in ortho/neuro/general surgery.
We'd been in there close to 2 hours by the time we finished with the wound vac. Two other nurses (the charge and my preceptor) came in to shoo the two of us off to lunch. I came back from my hour lunch break (this was an exceptional hospital that took really good care of the nurses, especially the float ones)

off topic reply here, but... wow:smilecoffeecup: ! float nurses at my hospital get more dumped on than appreciated.

Specializes in ER, PACU.

While attending nursing school I was working as an ER Tech. One of my primary jobs was to give chest compressions. Well on this fine day of giving compressions to an elderly woman I felt warm blobs of something falling on the tops of my shoes. After we ended our efforts I looked down to see the tops of my shoes crawling with maggots!!! Yes maggots! This has been the one and only time thus far that I had to excuse myself quickly in hopes that my fellow co-workers didn't see me get sick.

While attending nursing school I was working as an ER Tech. One of my primary jobs was to give chest compressions. Well on this fine day of giving compressions to an elderly woman I felt warm blobs of something falling on the tops of my shoes. After we ended our efforts I looked down to see the tops of my shoes crawling with maggots!!! Yes maggots! This has been the one and only time thus far that I had to excuse myself quickly in hopes that my fellow co-workers didn't see me get sick.

omg.. where did they come from?

hmm might have been a little late for CPR?

a friend of mine working er pushed a guys skull in once, he had banged it pretty hard and the skin looked normal untill she palped it and it sunk in......ewwww:barf02::barf02:

Wow, I hope I will have a "stomach of steel " when I finish nursing school.hehe

These are great!!!

Although some quite stomach turning- still gives me the extra oomph to finish school & get into the field.

Bumping for more!

Work ER, see it all......I thought nothing could get to me. Then one night EMS brought in a homeless man and put him in the only empty bed...in the room to which I was assigned. It was almost time for meal breaks to start. Put on a pair of gloves and started at the top. He smelled, of course, but it wasn't too horrible at first. As expected, it got worse when I took his shirt off and got a whiff of his pitts. Told the man I'd be right back, ducked into the med room and grabbed the mentholatum. Went back in with a smile. He was a very tall man and feeling weak, so when I got to his pants he honestly wasn't able to help me much. I moved down his feet and took his shoes off to tug his pants off and the smell just about knocked me over. He had had diarrhea at some point in time in the not-so-near past and it had run down into his socks and shoes. Either hadn't bothered or hadn't had the opportunity to clean himself up. Got his pants off and the dried, old feces was caked from his groin on down. Took his socks off and at that point the charge walked in to see how I was doing. Later she told me that I was almost literally turning green and looking like I was going to cry. That was the only time in 19 years of ER nursing, plus 4 years of home care before that, that I just couldn't bring myself to eat when it was my turn for a break.

Specializes in Med Surg - yes, it's a specialty.

Walked into extremely obese (like u see on tv folks) pts room and realized I was standing in something that went "splat splat splat" when I walked. Looked down - lots of clear liquid? Water? Oh no, she was seeping all over - it had ran off bed into floor. Splat splat - oops - sorry, was I standing in you?

And the runner up - necrotizing fasciatis wound about 12 inches across open with loose skin I could have put my hold hand under - on a back. I dressed up like hazmat to do dressing changes so I missed a lot of the smell.

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