I am venting my pet peeves. I had one of each of these yesterday, 1 patient w/ 3 of these. Share with me yours.
I hate:
1. Giving enemas - I have never not caused a huge mess even before I get the solution INTO the patient.
2. Taking accuchecks - The accucheck needs a calibration or quality check, or has the wrong code card for the strips, or I don't stick the patient hard enough so there's not enough blood and then have to go run for another finger stick thingie because the second one I grabbed is faulty
3. Sitz bath - see #1
4. Simply having a patient in isolation - putting on and taking off the PPE can suck your time, and if the patient has the temp in their room up I get all hot and sweaty within 5 minutes
5. Putting in a foley - this is never as easy as it should be. Either the A&O patient is unhelpful "Please keep your knees up and apart Ms X" or the anatomy is unhelpful.
Spoon feeding patients that cannot feed themselves. Used to work with geriatric med-surg patients, and this seemed to take forever at my busiest times of day.
Specializes in MED/SURG STROKE UNIT, LTC SUPER., IMU.
Talking to pt's families because they keep calling for an update. Every time they call I am in another pt's room and try to get off the phone quickly, but they just keep asking questions. I really need a nice way to tell them "Do they want me to take care of their family member and the other 5-6 patients that I have or do they want for me to chat on the phone with them?" Seriously, I had a pt's family member calling me every 1 1/2-2 hours the last two days even after I discharged their family member. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy talking with patients and their family members, but when it is interfering with care it drives me up the wall.
Cleaning the wheelchairs. When did this become a nursing task? I'm too busy, and we have housekeeping, but this for some reason has been assigned to nurses.
Have to agree with feeding pts. It's easy, but it's often time-consuming, and I just sit there thinking about all the other things I need to be doing. Supper time I don't mind as much, because I can pass 1800 meds, clear pumps, and straighten out the room for end of shift while I'm in there.
Belly dressing changes with packing - not hard, per se, but I'm super picky about my sterile technique so I have to go slowly to do it right.
Tubing changes for new PICCs & TLC's. I'm ICU, so it usually isn't just one tubing set - it might be 5 or 6.
Oddly, neuro checks don't bug me too much. Most of mine are on pts I'm recovering from a carotid endarterectomy.
I really don't mind doing any of those things. But I hate doing routine vitals. I don't know why, I just do. Mind you, I do them, and most often I do manual BP's because I don't trust our electric cuffs, but even in nursing school it was something that I just didn't like doing.
I love bathing people. I have my best conversations with patients during bed baths. If another nurse is helping me it's even better. Love it. Keep in mind this is on night shift. I know it's different on day shift.
definitely bathing people oh and sticking for blood...especially blood cultures
I'm with jkaee & Christy - I hate obs. Either nothing's changed or they mean more work! I'd seriously rather clean up malena than do four sets of routine obs. I particularly hate doing 0600 obs, which is a courtesy for the AM staff where I work, rather than a ND responsibility.
Oh I detest vitals. That was the only thing I did as a CNA that I didn't like. Oddly enough it was the largest chore that sucked up the biggest amount of my time. To take vitals for 25 pts in a 12 hr noc shift with sometimes 12 fresh post ops rolling in on evenings made me want to pull my hair out. Literally. Now that I only have to do vitals on 5 pts tops if we don't get a CNA it's doable.
What I hate now though are bedpans. You know those LOL that only tinkle 100ml every hr but still manage to soak the whole bed each time. At one job where my pts are post ops I make them get up unless they have an ordered bedrest or some funky bp or low H & H. Very rare. And for some odd reason i love the routine of placing a foley and dropping NG's. They do not like me too much but they won't get up every hour either, hehe. At the LTAC I work also I do see the occ pt on bedrest and it's my luck I usually get them. Without a foley. Ugh.
silentRN
559 Posts
6AM Finger Sticks!!!!