Not a poop or pee nurse?!?

Nurses General Nursing

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Okay, just have to vent a little here. :madface: I was working the other day at a fairly new job (which I like a lot), and I was working with another nurse that I haven't shared very many shifts with. She is probably in her lower to mid 40's and has been an RN for about 1 year. She has always been nice in all the times that I have talked to her which really have been limited as we generally work opposite days of eachother. Anyways, one of my pt's had been incont of urine and BM and needed to be cleaned up, so since she was sitting at the nurse's station, I asked her if she would come help me. When I told her what I needed help with, she informed me that she didn't go to school to be a poop or pee nurse!!!!! HEELLLOOOO???? I am an RN too and if someone is laying in a pile of poo, I'll be changing them!! I couldn't believe she said that!! Evidently, this isn't the only time. One of the LPN's on my shift said she told her the same thing. I am so disgusted because this isn't the impression that I originally had of her. What the he** is wrong with some people!!!!?? I'm not chalking this one up as "she was just having a bad day" - I think this is actually her opinion. Please tell me this is not the attitude they're teaching in nursing school - I know it was not what I was taught. :angryfire :angryfire :angryfire :angryfire :angryfire

Specializes in ICU/PCU/Infusion.

yeah, where i come from we call that "too posh to wash".

that woman needs an attitude adjustment!!

How are her thoughts on vomit??? It is a part of my patient, and therefore I care enough to help!!!!!!!

and

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It isn't just a body function as much as a risk of self esteem, hopelessness, powerlessness, anxiety, depression, sadness, anger, and so on!

Being a professional patient several times this year (and years past; LOL):jester:) , I have been in the situation where I was sick in a hospital bed and wondered when help was going to arrive! I incurred the :barf02: problem (it was inevitable, folks) several hours after a surgery in March. I knew the staff outside my room had to have heard me vomiting, but nobody rushed in right away to try to help me. I vaguely remember (must've been delusional and in a fog :uhoh21: ) someone coming in to change my pan, but, again, I wasn't very coherent and, looking back (and now coming across this thread on the discussion forum), I feel angry that nobody came in right away to try to alleviate some of my stress...

Ah, well...

Specializes in ortho/neuro/general surgery.
I've worked with twin of this nurse. Had an RN spent 10 mins looking for me (I was cleaning up a C-Diff patient) to tell me that the patient in XXX needed a bedpan. I asked her nicely to please help XXX as I was busy at the moment. She said that was not in her job description and "she didn't do bedpans, that's why she was an RN". My 90 year old patient I was cleaning up said - glad you aren't my nurse, you are a b@tch. I also quit that job shortly thereafter because that was the attitude of most of the RN's there.......

Good for that patient for saying it like it was!

OK people, I'm wondering what hospital's you work at. I currently work as a CNA ( I am awaiting my test date to take boards) and I can tell you that very few nurses I work with are "pee or poop nurses" or even call light nurses for that matter. They would rather do laps around the floor looking for a CNA to give the patient a pillow, change their brief, assist them to the bedside commode or heaven forbid get them some ice water. This is my first hospital job so I thought this was the norm. Everyone I talk to from my class who were CNA's said the same thing the nurses at their hospitals. I wonder if the CNA's that you work with would agree that you are willing to "lend a helping hand" or do they see you as "lap nurses" running around looking for a CNA to do the "dirty work"...... :confused:

Specializes in Mental Health and MR/DD.
Here's another aspect of it: How would this nurse chart urine color and clarity, if she didn't see it? How about odor, that's an indicator of a UTI? No, poo isn't pleasant, but it can tell you a lot about a pt.'s health, and can be a indicator of underlying problems.

:yeahthat: :yeahthat: :yeahthat:

Good point!!!!!

Specializes in cardiac.
OK people, I'm wondering what hospital's you work at. I currently work as a CNA ( I am awaiting my test date to take boards) and I can tell you that very few nurses I work with are "pee or poop nurses" or even call light nurses for that matter. They would rather do laps around the floor looking for a CNA to give the patient a pillow, change their brief, assist them to the bedside commode or heaven forbid get them some ice water. This is my first hospital job so I thought this was the norm. Everyone I talk to from my class who were CNA's said the same thing the nurses at their hospitals. I wonder if the CNA's that you work with would agree that you are willing to "lend a helping hand" or do they see you as "lap nurses" running around looking for a CNA to do the "dirty work"...... :confused:

I worked as a NAII while going to nursing school. And I remember how it was to take care of a large team of pt's that were generally incontinent. They were very sick. A lot of the RN"S refused to help with cleaning up these pt's. But, some did not mind, expecially if I was overloaded with what was going on that day. When I passed my boards, I went to work as a RN on that same floor. I always remembered how I felt as a NAII and asking for help and not recieving it. SO, if the NA came up to me and asked for help, I would try to do my best to help him/her with that pt's care.

Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

Lap nurses lol. The image i got was a group of nurses, running laps in the 200 m Find-the-CNA Dash

Specializes in ER, ICU, L&D, OR.

If they arent willing to do Poop or pee, then they arent a nurse and their license should be taken a away

Heck, sometimes pee and poop were the highlights of my day.

Specializes in PICU, Nurse Educator, Clinical Research.

worked as a nursing assistant in a neuro ICU while in nursing school. Logically, most patients were on stool softeners so there would be no straining to poo, so it was often a sea of brown there. I had poo from armpits to shoes once, and it got in my hair on more than one occasion (still makes me queasy to remember THAT episode!). 95% of the nurses I worked with were ALWAYS there when the poo fairy called- I attribute a lot of that to the fact that these patients needed really close supervision all the time, epsecially if they were being moved around in bed.

One nurse, after 15 years as a supervisor on the floor, came to the ICU to work as a staff nurse. This woman was a nightmare on more than one level- we could page each other directly (locator badges), but she would insist on overhead paging me whenever her patients needed ANYTHING within my scope of practice- I was the only CNA on the unit, and I spent the vast majority of each shift in the patient rooms, helping the nurses. She'd ask the unit secretary to page me over and over and over, to the point that the secretary would say, 'look, call her directly in the room, if you want, but I'm guessing she's BUSY, as she's been in room 5 for the last 20 minutes!'

Once, after ten minutes of repeatedly paging me while I was holding up the legs of a 300 lb woman on a vent while 2 nurses tried valiantly to mop up her steady stream of liquipoo, Nurse Pagealot finally walked down to the room I was in. she opened the curtain, displaying this poor lady's goods to the entire universe, and said, 'rachel, I need you to get mr. smith in room 10 up to the commode. I've been paging you repeatedly, and you haven't responded. When are you going to be free to help him?' This was the only A&O, non-vented patient on the unit.

one of the nurses I was helping turned to her and said, 'well, I'm guessing she's going to be done here around the same time mr. smith would be FINISHED on the commode if you were down there helping him instead of looking for rachel.' Pagealot said, 'well, I thought that's why we have a CNA.' My hero said, 'no, THIS is why we have a CNA. That's YOUR patient. If you have enough time to come debate this with me, you have enough time to take care of him. Now, unless you want to come over here and help, please give this woman some dignity, close the curtain, and get out.'

This same woman went down to smoke at least five times a shift. I smoke, and I NEVER took smoke breaks at work.

I hate pee and poo, and I'm not sorry I don't have to deal with it in my office job. But if you're taking care of sick people, you take care of their poo. Sorry. Nobody likes dealing with poo. If the patients could do it themselves, they wouldn't be in the hospital, most likely.

I'm a pre-nursing gal, and I have to be brutally honest here: I read this post because this is going to be one of the most difficult things for me to get over during my training and the biggest reason why I want to work with newborns and in the NICU. I know there will be no way of avoiding it for training, but "little poop" is better than "big poop".

I had many discussions with my mother (who was an NP and DOR before she died) about this very thing and she kept telling me that the first few times you do clean up you literally think you are going to die, but then you get over it and start to focus more on how uncomfortable the patient must be and put your own thoughts about it aside.

I hope she's right.

However, I never, ever would have made the statement "that isn't what I went to school for"...if falls under the catagory "patient care" and if you have RN, LPN etc on your name tag...then it's your job!

OMG...my sides are splitting now.

That is the best thing about being a Senior Citizen...you get away with stuff like that and nobody says a word.

:rotfl:

I've worked with twin of this nurse. Had an RN spent 10 mins looking for me (I was cleaning up a C-Diff patient) to tell me that the patient in XXX needed a bedpan. I asked her nicely to please help XXX as I was busy at the moment. She said that was not in her job description and "she didn't do bedpans, that's why she was an RN". My 90 year old patient I was cleaning up said - glad you aren't my nurse, you are a b@tch. I also quit that job shortly thereafter because that was the attitude of most of the RN's there.......
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