How much "dirty work" have you encountered in nursing school

[dulcet]

I want to hear your stories how much have you seen in nursing schools. For a lot of you this was probably your first time experience so tell me what was going through your head. What made it less awkward and more comfortable for your patients

[futureeastcoastNP]

No it implies that it is dirty, nothing more. Dirty simply means unclean, and it is indeed dirty. It can still be natural, part of the job, human nature, blah blah blah. It is your own fault if you want to add negative stigmas to the word dirty. Just because a nurse calls it dirty work does not mean the nurse doesn't care for his or her patients. It's almost comical for someone to think cleaning up soiled feces is not dirty. I guess the posters before me have some miracle patients that excrete rainbows and butterflies.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

No, but we have a lot of experience with prospective students who think this sort of thing is either a stopper for them or think that somebody else will do it for them.

What made it less awkward and more comfortable for your patients

When you post a question in a nursing forum that asks about getting more comfortable about "dirty work" and how much we have seen of it in nursing school, did you think we were going to answer about things like, oh, the plumbers in the Nixon White House, Michael Caine in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, or John Travolta in Dirty Dancing? The answers you got pretty much answered your question, albeit in a form you might not have expected.

[nursel56]

The word "dirty" when combined with the word "work" becomes a phrase with a meaning unique to their definitions used separately. None of the definitions of "dirty work" reduce it to physical properties with no connotation of distaste, repugnance or of a nature left for the least skilled workers to complete.

But to the OP.. I know you didn't mean it that way and my recollection is that I was so terrified as a student doing a "Harris Flush" in front of the strictest instructor there (who hated me..I just knew it :-)) that I lost my olfactory sense and most of my peripheral vision.

Since then I feel more and more like Grn Tea expressed. It's not some weird Cult of Poop, it's observing people at their most vulnerable so many times that you begin to police your words and even thoughts sometimes.

As a practical tip I'd add..watch your facial expression which can be unconscious. I once had someone complain that a great nurse always made an "ew, gross" face when suctioning..I'm sure the nurse didn't realize it.

[sjalv]

I'm a 2nd semester student but I don't consider it "dirty work". It's just the less pleasant parts of patient care but they are some of the most important ones as far as dignity goes. I certainly would not want to be lying in bed with soiled linens/a dirty bottom, so I keep that in mind when a patient has a 'code brown'.

[RunBabyRN]

@GrnTea- I didn't mean to imply that assisting with a latch was dirty, per se, but more that you can't be afraid to put your hands in there and be intimate and possibly get breastmilk on your hands and such. I'm a huge proponent of breastfeeding, and I enjoy that part of what I do very much. But I also see a lot of student nurses terrified to touch a breast like that, let alone demonstrate for a patient how to hand express milk. Much of this work is very intimate in many ways, and we can't be afraid to get in there and be hands-on. In no way do I believe that breastfeeding is dirty. I simply meant that we can't be afraid to metaphorically get our hands dirty.

[INN_777, BSN, RN]

I see the points of both futureeastcoastNP and GrnTea. I think the difference is pure semantics- what we put in the meaning of "dirty". The work in question IS dirty in the physical sense of "not clean", but it is NOT (in my mind) dirty in the sense of "unbecoming or beneath somebody".

[guest769224]

I have found that when patients are embarrassed about something they tend to relax if you can make a joke about it and smile at them. Explain to them that this is what the nursing profession entails and that they have no reason to be sorry, we are there to help them and make them as comfortable as we possibly can. Primp and fluff to their every need. A seasoned nurse on my unit once explained to me, "I treat every patient as if they were my own family member. I do all the extra things to show that I care."

What an example of true giving. She's a role model.

[Nurseypoo82]

I think nurses sometimes do have to do somethings that most people get all grossed out over but it's part of the territory. "Dirty work" doesn't mean your patient as a human being is dirty but just sometimes you have to deal with some foul smelling odors or body fluids that are not clean and don't smell like roses lol

[Jenngirl34RN]

Semantics aside, the truth is everyone has to deal with some unpleasant things when they are in nursing school. I am only 2nd quarter and have already seen and had clean up a lot of different body fluids and other fairly gross things. It takes a little while to get used to it, especially some of the smells. At this point the only thing I really still have trouble with is C.diff. That smell makes it very hard for me to keep my gag reflex under control, but I have managed to get through a few C.diff clean-ups without losing my lunch, and it gets a little easier each time, but I am not sure that it will ever become as natural to deal with as everything else I have encountered.

End of the day, you will either figure out how to deal with that kind of thing and become a nurse, or you won't.

[SopranoKris, MSN, RN, NP]

"Dirty work" is par for the course. The way I approach these tasks is to put myself in my patient's shoes. How would I like this procedure to go so I don't feel humiliated or uncomfortable? Just taking a quick time out to think & plan ahead before I jump in and do what I need to do really makes a difference. I had to give a pt an enema and when I was done she said "you're the only one I would ever trust to do that again. Thank you". That really made my day!

Do as much as you can to maintain your pt's dignity. You know on the inside they feel horribly embarrassed that you're seeing them at their worst. Show them with your words & face (no nose wrinkling or grimacing) that what you're doing isn't a bother.