Extremely Overweight Nurses

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I've been seeing a lot of obese nurses lately. In my opinion it's not setting the right example,not is it SAFE. If someone codes or there's a fire a nurses who is huge can't run to get to/from the emergency. Another example ... CPR ! It's exhausting,if you're not fit to do it...should that patient pay the price? It's so hypocritical. I understand with long shifts and not much sleep... Gaining weight is extremely easy to do. However,choosing healthy food options ( not vending machines and pepsis) and staying active even on your days off is important.

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Specializes in Public Health, L&D, NICU.

Well, thanks for writing me off in one fell swoop because I don't meet your standards of beauty. Seems like I see a lot of judgment, and wouldn't it be hard to be compassionate and caring and objective if your nose is shoved so high to the ceiling?

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Wow people, its amazing how one little comment can get so many people's panties in a bunch. Lighten up.

i have been a travel nurse for the last 6 years, so feel like i have seen alot of nurses in alot of hospitals. Different weight categories all the time. i also hapoen to not be in the "young category". 45 y.o. But i am only 5 feet tall and weigh 91 pounds. Trust me, i think im fat ( i tell my husband that all the time), but the thing i get "teased " about from other nurses is being short. Really??? Shut the hell up about it already. Unless i have to start climbing trees for a living i think i will be ok. Anyway, my lack of height is out of my control, and if anything really did come up where i need a couple more iinches....weth

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inches, well hopefully my buddies will help me out. But for my weight, that is something i can control, and i will never let my job of being a nurse or not being a nurse have any decision on how much i weigh. Junk food is everywhere, even in hospitals. So are salad bars. I may not always like being short, but i like being thin.

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I came into the hospital once with a nasty concussion from a fall. Being the stubborn patient I was, I insisted I was fine and got out of bed. A second later, I fainted. The overweight nurse had thrown herself on the ground and cushioned my fall. She joked that she had at least made a nice pillow. :)

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I came into the hospital once with a nasty concussion from a fall. Being the stubborn patient I was, I insisted I was fine and got out of bed. A second later, I fainted. The overweight nurse had thrown herself on the ground and cushioned my fall. She joked that she had at least made a nice pillow. :)

Wow. I'll try to catch a patient, but no way I'm going to just "throw myself on the ground" for them. Seems like a pretty weird response to seeing a pt faint, frankly.

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All I could think when I read that is "oh the germs!" lol...

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Lol that is funny. No patient would want me to catch their fall. I'm a bag o' bones. I am working on strengthening up, but I have some health issues that make it very difficult for me to gain weight. Sounds like a good problem right? Maybe in any other field but nursing... :)

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Yes... it is all Osama Bin Laden's fault for the fat people in the world...

Damn you Bin Laden and you making us fat, from the grave...

:D:) :p

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Wow people, its amazing how one little comment can get so many people's panties in a bunch. Lighten up.

Far from being "one little comment," CurlyKirby went out of her way to start a thread that only the most ignorant of allnurses members would fail to predict causing a ruckus. And she kindly poster her picture so we could all see that SHE is not being hypocritical because SHE is not obese.

I've been seeing a lot of obese nurses lately. In my opinion it's not setting the right example,not is it SAFE. If someone codes or there's a fire a nurses who is huge can't run to get to/from the emergency. Another example ... CPR ! It's exhausting,if you're not fit to do it...should that patient pay the price? It's so hypocritical. I understand with long shifts and not much sleep... Gaining weight is extremely easy to do. However,choosing healthy food options ( not vending machines and pepsis) and staying active even on your days off is important.

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I might say that I don't like people of African descent or skinny people or those who worship more than one god or a different aspect of the diety than the one I prefer, or people who date their own gender and that would be read as discriminatory. You can't get away with discriminating against people based upon their race, gender, sexual preferences or religion. But it's still OK to bash fat people as this entire thread aptly demonstrates.

"Iko Iko", by Cyndi Lauper, is a great interpretation of the hypocrisy in America, that is also reflected in this forum. I can smoke dope because I have cancer, but you smoke dope because you're a drug addict, but I'm slim because it's OK to take diet pills, but you're fat because you're lazy, and I pray daily so I'm a saint but you're going to hell because you drink beer, but it's OK to drink wine so you're doomed, and etc.

I know nothing about the OP except what she's posted here -- so is she thin because she has an eating disorder or takes diet pills? Does she smoke? Is she addicted to painkillers or alcohol or gambling or crack cocaine? We don't know. We do know that she hates fat people -- obviously many do -- and that she has no qualms about going on a public forum and hating for all the world to see. She's also apparently young, and displays the ignorance of youth. In about thirty or forty years when she's lived a little and has some experience to draw from, perhaps, like most of us, she will begin to see the world less in black and white and more in shades of grey. I hope she looks back at this as one of her more cringeworthy moments.

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Specializes in hospice and home health.

Until science understands obesity better, I choose to avoid judgments about people afflicted with this terrible medical condition. There's a socially accepted tendency to blame the victim and site "choice" as the cause of obesity. Perhaps this is wrong. Perhaps obesity has less to do with healthy food choices/exercise, than with DNA.

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Specializes in hospice and home health.

Makes me wonder who designs those "IQ" tests...

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Specializes in Transitional Nursing.

I'm 100 lbs overweight give or take and I can run circles around many of the thinner girls I work with. You rarely see me stopping and you would much rather me pump your chest with my weight behind it than the 120 lb person standing next to me.

I'm fat, not disabled. I like food, and I have a slow metabolism. If you had my metabolism you would be fat too. I don't care to put in the extra effort It requires me to shed the weight. Someday I will, maybe. Maybe not, just to make people like you feel uncomfortable. When I graduate I hope I find myself in the state that you live, and I hope I'm your nurse so you can see just how awesome this fat girl is and how fast I can move. My weight helps me do my job, not the opposite.

I also can pick up grandpa and transfer him into bed without batting an eyelash, and you know how many times other girls call me to help them do just that?

I am married, and I am just as fat now (well, maybe a little less fat) than the day my husband married me. And you know what else? I am beautiful. I am much more beautiful than you, I can assure you, and that's not because of how I look.

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