Do you prefer to contend with the smell of stool or the smell of Glade?

[RNdynamic]

Hospitals employees have many different ways of combating offensive odors produced by patients' bodies. The odors may be due to infectious diarrhea, necrotic infections, or excessive body fat. We've all been in that situation many times, and we've all dealt with it one way or another, whether it be through machines which suck in the odor and expel neutral smelling air into the room, or potpourri, peppermint spirits that you can sprinkle about, essential oils, or chemical products that you can spray such as Glade.

However, when do these measures become offensive to use? One time I was washing up an incontinent patient who had c-diff and although it smelled rather gross, the situation was worsened when another nurse walked over to the doorway and started spraying Glade into the room as I was washing up. Because of that, I had to contend with an extremely unpleasant smelling combination of cinnamon and ****. I would have rather just dealt with the stool.

What is your experience in these matters? Does your hospital have the machines that suck in the odor? Or do you spray or sprinkle substances around? What is your preference?

[NurseSpeedy, ADN, LPN, RN]

Kitiger said:

Almost all of the sprays will set me coughing. A couple puffs of albuterol usually stops the cough. I have reactive airway disease, so I don't do well with sprays and perfumes.

I'm in the same boat. I found out a few months ago that I get the same thing from the scented trash bags. My mother put a bunch of my daughter's clothes in one for me to bring home one day and I had to reach for the rescue inhaler because the trash bag was laced with febreeze.

[SmilingBluEyes]

At home I just light a match. Works like a charm.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Neither. My poop smells like roses. How else do you think I got my username?

But when we have a particularly smelly surgery, where it's either dead bowel or a really foul-smelling abscess, we'll break out the peppermint oil. Couple of drops on a towel in the hallway clears up the smell for everyone except those in the OR. They usually go for the benzoin smear on the mask.

[OyWithThePoodles, RN]

The cleaning solution or cafeteria now uses reminds me of dissecting pigs.

[SurgicalTechCST]

A family member (who shall remain anonymous here) keeps her home like a shrine to Martha Stewart. It really is lovely, but gives me the feeling that if I touch anything, I'll leave visible fingerprints.

Anyway, her guest bath downstairs is always appropriately decorated for whatever holiday or seasonal event may be approaching. Everytime I go in her bathroom, I find a seaonally appropriate little tin of some kind with kitchen matches and under the lid is attached a strike strip from a matchbook, sitting next to a small glass container of some kind for the burnt matches go be placed in.

No candles, no incense, no other smelly device, no air freshener. Apparently she is also a firm believer in the power of a lit match to remove any offensive odors!

The children however are not allowed to touch it as she has it up on a shelf over the sink, where only the grownups can see or reach it.

[SurgicalTechCST]

It's been a while since I've been in a case requiring it, but when I was, we used oil of wintergreen smeared sparingly inside our masks. Olfactory fatigue usually set in later and we couldn't smell either one.

[Kitiger, RN]

Actually, I blessed in that my nose doesn't smell very well. Sometimes I can't identify even common smells, like coffee. (Is something burning?) I had a kiddo in home care whose colostomy bag could empty out the living room. It didn't even bother me.

[martymoose, BSN, RN]

I believe the excessive body fat smell would be YEAST blecchh from those who cant or don't practice adequate hygiene. Few hits of miconazole powder ( for the pt)usually does the trick.

I didn't think fat smelled.

Also , we used to have this citrus spray, but all it did was smell like citrus scented poop. Got something different now.

We've also used charcoal briquets in a pan under the bed for the chronically scented pts. Someone saw the bag once, was wonderingg if we were going to have a BBQ

[KThurmond]

We used to light a match in phlebotomy clinicals before preparing stool samples.

In my retail job, we had a manager who would fart while recovering aisles and "store use" different scents. She said clean linen is the only scent that covered the smell

[raptorfem, BSN, RN]

I find a lovely paraben-scented Glade Plug-In works wonders >-D

But in all seriousness, yeh I'm not a fan of the vanilla/strawberry/cinnamon whatever crap. At our hospital there is a generic air freshener in the Omnicell that is pretty "neutral" smelling, I don't personally use it but the scent doesn't bother me. For patients who have particularly stinky output (pardon the language), we either use one of those big orange rubbery-looking scent sticks? Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Another trick I have learned which works great: take an ice bucket or some open container, pour some coffee grounds (unused dry ones), and set in the bathroom. You will get a coffee smell and it does seem to neutralize the odor. Something else I have heard of is cat litter to absorb the smell, but obviously we don't carry it in the hospital and I think it might pose a risk if people had respiratory issues? Personally odors don't usually bother me, I'm more the type to get woozy during really weirdly specific stuff...seeing intubation always freaks me the heck out, I could never work ICU...

[Davey Do]

Kitiger said:

Actually, I blessed in that my nose doesn't smell very well.

I don't smell well either, Kitiger.

"Hard of smelling", as Seinfeld's Elaine said.

The only thing that's ever made me gag is getting a whiff of old old blood after I removed a tampon from a Woman that had been left for, probably, weeks.

It did not cause me to "want to slap my Mammy", as Nurse from Louisiana one said.

[Farawyn]

I worked in OBGYN and there were tampons and other stuff that we removed that were up yonder so long they had practically taken root.

PeeYeww!

Worse than stool or any paraben.

Louisiana nurses use funny slang!

I thought the term was Spank Uncle Frank. Let's leave Mammy out of this. She has enough issues.