Have you ever puked/fainted/etc at work?

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in Acute Care - Adult, Med Surg, Neuro.

I love hearing gross stories like this. I had a patient with an ileus. When I went in the room the patient vomited and filled a few of those large basins with fecal smelling, brown liquid vomit. As they were hurling, I was dry heaving. Thankfully I had an order for an NG tube and that took care of that.

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Dang. Poor patient. That sucks man.

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No but I did have an episode in nursing school during OB clinicals. The physician who had just delivered the baby was one who obviously enjoyed teaching as he went out of his way to explain things to us. Well, he decided he would let us get a good look at the placenta, and when he took out of the basin it was in and held it up in front of our faces, I started swaying back and forth, sweating and getting lightheaded! I had to go sit down in front of a fan and recover! The funny thing is I thought I would love OB and possibly want to work in that area.....but not after that.

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Nope. When ever I came close I'd excuse myself and then the feeling would go away.

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Specializes in ortho, hospice volunteer, psych,.

I was a student and was assigned a patient who had lower Gl tract bleeding. He alternately had massive blowout obnoxious smelling diarrhea or equally putrid vomit. That wasn't what what did me in though.

Just as I was carrying the soiled sheets out, the patient's aunt arrived. She was wearing Toujour Moi, a very heavy cloying perfume women a generation above my mom's used to wear a lot.

I survived the GI debacle without a problem, but hurled into those gross

and disgusting sheets when I got a whiff of that obnoxious perfume.

So much for professionalism!

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Nope.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

Yup! 3 times in 35 years.

1) Nursing student in the OR....bilateral amputation of gangrenous legs. I think the surgeon was being a donkey and just as one leg was almost amputated he shouted at me to catch the leg...startled I did as I was told...I was 17 years old....as the leg came free the my vision began to darken I turned away for the sterile field and face planted. I woke up on the floor in the hall. I wanted to quit nursing. What a butt head.

2) new nurse about 3-4 years....we had a patient come in with an infection under his cast NO ONE told me what could be in there when the MD made a window there were maggots....the smell was over whelming. I vomited in the trash can.

3) MANY MANY years later (about20) I was pregnant with my first. A local homeless man came into the ED....before I could stop the new tech he removed the patients shoes...inside were maggots and DIRTY foul smelling feet. Yup...puked again.

Defecation occurs.

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Specializes in PACU, pre/postoperative, ortho.

Only once, a few months ago, when a stomach bug decided to hit me mid-shift at 0100. No one on call & I had to tough it out for the rest of the shift, sanitizing myself & workstation constantly.

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Almost. I had a cold so I was wearing a mask and I was dehydrated. Would have been fine, but I had a baby who was on a radiant warmer and I spent too much time in the bed, the heat was too much and I had to sit down. Apparently I was white as a ghost. Embarrassing lol

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

Twice.

First time as a student observing a procedure. The patient with her butt in the air, well 'padded' by Valium. Wished I could have had some when the doc started moving that proctoscope like a stick-shift, and none too gently. My peripheral vision began closing in and I felt light-headed.....so I left the room and went into a conference room across the hall and sank into a chair, breathed deep, closed my eyes and bent my head down between my knees.

Second time, fast-forward 7 years. A patient who had been in a car accident in which his gut took the brunt of the steering wheel being shoved into it at who-knows-how-many-miles-per-hour. He came up to our floor from ER and began bleeding through his rectum. The smell of fresh blood mixed with stool was ungodly-awful and there were huge sausage sized blood clots, too. The entire team and the two supervisors had to take turns 3 at a time, cleaning it all up......because it just. kept. coming. out. You went in and helped for as long as you could tolerate it (not long for any of us) and switched out with another staff member. The second time was possibly worse than the first. We had to keep cleaning him up until the surgeon could get there. As ghastly as it was for us, it was worse for him, for sure; we also had to make his family members go to a waiting room on another floor because the sight of green-faced, heaving nurses bundling continuous heaps of bloody bed-sheets out of the room was entirely too traumatic.

Oh, and when I was 18 and gave blood for the first time (before I ever thought about becoming a nurse), nobody told me I should eat before I went to donate. Well, I hadn't eaten at all that morning. I remember my face and lips feeling all tingly and hearing a nurse say, "Oops! We're going to lose her!" and suddenly I was practically standing on my head with my feet up in the air. Live and learn!

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

Although I have never puked, vomited or fainted while at work, I once gagged at the sight and smell of a bedpan filled with semiformed poop. It was mushy, filled with corn and mixed veggies, and had an overwhelmingly dreadful stench that filled the hallway.

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Specializes in MDS/ UR.

OR rotation as a student- holding the bowl for delivery of the woman's breast after mastectomy, I was 19 and saw many stars in that moment.

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