You ever had those moments that you just want to barf? Of course you have! In this glorious Nurses Week contest, I want you to make us do just that. ? Is that too disgusting? 'Cmon. This will be fun. Share your 'Oh gross' moment and you can win a $100 Amazon Gift Card courtesy of allnurses Ebooks!
Quality Nursing Ebooks. Anytime. Anywhere. Our ebooks are created by nurses, educators, students, and healthcare professionals. We have one goal - To help you succeed in your nursing career.
I just don't grasp how someone's mind can degenerate into such socially inappropriate behavior. I'd want to guess she was prob such a prim & proper gracious grandma-type in her well days.
I know the dementias alter the victims' social & moral compasses. I just find that so hard to reconcile.
I have taken care of two kids who were developmentally disabled who thought any naughty action was hilarious. They were the best tattletales, as both of them would loudly laugh and laugh at whoever was doing something naughty! It had to do with something about the corpus callosum not functioning properly? I think?
I used to think that too but somewhere along the line I came to believe that some of these people just had to be a-holes to begin with. IDK, maybe I got jaded along the way, or afraid it might happen to me?
Maybe.... altho retired 10+ yrs after 36 working years, I still find it hard to think that pts LOSE that sense of moral appropriateness.
But back to the grossest things, it seems like maggot-related occurences and body fluids are leading. I don't drink out of facility water fountains anymore.
At 1 place, a walkie-talkie pt stopped for a drink at her unit's water fountain. Thing was she had an in-dwelling foley cath and she lifted the bag and placed it inside the fountain basin as she drank! She had been carrying it around like a lady's purse and she HAD to rest it somewhere while she drank.
Many years ago I had an elderly gentleman and reminded him he must save his bowel movements and explained about the “hat” we had placed in the toilet and to call when he did. The shift was almost over and he hadn’t called about it. He was a little forgetful and I thought maybe he forgot to call or whatever. I went into his bathroom and he had stool in the hat but also a little in an empty coffee cup, a bowl, a plate and some neatly wrapped up in a napkin, all balanced precariously around the bathroom. Compared to other stories here this one is pretty mild!
This is a toss up for me, so I will list the three....
1. I was a nursing aid, in nursing school. The patient had been admitted for a stroke, and had some serious word salad. He also, unfortunately, had a wicked case of diarrhea. His diarrhea was so terrible and prolific that the nurse recommended that we use the Yankauer suction to suck up his pool of poo in his bed before cleaning him up. We suctioned it up, did a full bed change, and left the room. I stopped in to check on him later and he was gagging, needing to be suctioned. The nurse grabbed the Yankauer and suctioned his mouth while he attempted to yelp and pull away. I could not catch her before she shoved it in his mouth....
2. I was in charge of the conscious sedation during a colonoscopy on a patient and the doctor was slowly pulling the scope out while suctioning. I am not exactly sure what went awry, but suddenly, liquid poo came flying out of the suction port and showered me, running down my face onto my shoes. I was brand new, and tried to keep it together while I politely excused myself From the room and ran for the shower room!
3. One of my fellow ICU nurses and I were using an EZ stand to get a patient up to the commode. She was about halfway there when she suddenly had a poo waterfall and a stream of explosive diarrhea shot out of her back end from the EZ stand, hit the floor, and splashed up all over the recliner. I am pretty sure I have nevermind jumped so fast or so high in my life to escape that waterfall 'o' poo. The look of horror on my colleagues face was priceless. There was a very long moment of silence before the patient just quietly said, 'well, that didn't go as planned.....'......
I was working in home health. I went in to a dark, older home and was ushered to a back bedroom. My patient was a poor young bed bound quadriplegic. One of his legs had been amputated from the hip area. The other leg had been amputated above the knee. The wound was gangrenous and foul. The mother was doing the best she could but there was a large 30 gallon trash can with foul dressings in it. I had to change the putrid dressing on his wound peeling gangrenous flesh off with the dressing. His catheter was tearing his urethra and his urine was foul and amber. It was different not to gag with the smell and state of this young man’s existence. Of course, I called the doctor to notify of the situation but it was a very sad and difficult experience.
Specializes in Pediatrics, Pediatric Float, PICU, NICU.
Short and easy gross story that has haunted me for over 10 years:
I was taking care of a 10 year old post T&A patient. He had just chugged some chocolate milk (first mistake) right before I came in the room to assess him first thing in the morning. He throws up the largest amount of chocolatey milky curdled gross post T&A emesis I've ever seen and smelled. Luckily I had a pink wash basin handy to catch 99% of it, so I am kneeling at his bedside holding the bucket for him to puke into and he just keeps going and going. He finally stops, I stand up to dispose of said emesis but apparently my body decided to have some orthostatic hypotension from kneeling so long so I lose balance and spill the entire bucket of chocolatey milky curdled emesis all over my scrubs. I can still smell and feel it 10 years later.
#1 C-sections are fun cases to assist on until you forget to put on your knee high shoe covers and the drape covering the patient did not contain the amniotic fluid.....yep you guessed it... amniotic fluid all down my scrubs and into my shoes, gross..Unfortunately for me, I could not leave to change until the case was completely done. On the plus side, the baby was beautiful.
#2 The day our scrub tech ended up with a piece of "prostate shaving" from a TURP on his beard.. So gross ,and the look on his face when told he had a piece of the specimen on his face, priceless.
I was working long term care when the resident thought she was pregnant and we had pretended to deliver her baby, putting her legs in stirrups and all, handing her a sweet baby doll at the end of the deliver. Now let me preface by this resident was alway naked no matter what. After the delivery of the pretend baby, she wanted to stand up. I assisted her to stand. Now to put this in perspective she was about 6 foot weight about 225lb and I am 4"11 140lbs. We stand up and she urinates in the floor, this makes her very angry and she decides that I am the father of her baby. She starts cussing me and grabs me around my neck and since she has urinated in the floor, we fall to the floor mean wall we are rolling around in the urine as I try to get out of her grips. As staff came to help, we got her stood up and placed back in her bad and cleaned up. I was covered from head to to in urine. My white uniform was now yellow.
One day while working in urgent care, I had a young girl approximately 12 there for a sore throat, fever. I was going to swab her for strep and flu. I swabbed her for the strep and she did very well with that. She ask to lie down for the flu nasal swab which I assisted her with. She begin to get the pale look on her face. I ask her are you OK? She sat up. I was standing between the bed and the wall. She sat up, and started to projectile vomit. I moved to the corner of the bed and put the trashcan where she could vomit in the trashcan. All was well until her mother took and pulled her very long hair back in a ponytail and was holding it to keep her from vomiting on her hair. At that time she started swinging her head back and forth. Vomit was flying all over me, the walls, the floor, the table. There was no where for me to go. I just had to stand there until the vomit subsided so that I could get help. I had yelled for assistance but being a small urgent care the other staff had stepped out for a break while I was rooming this patient. I was covered from head to to in her vomit. I was the only nurse and unable to leave or take a shower. We called the hospital to bring scrubs down. I wear a medium scrub and they brought me 2 x scrubs which I wore the rest of the day. This was a horrible day. To this day, the staff introduce me to new staff as the nurse that got vomited on...
Specializes in UC nurse and clinical education specialist.
Brand new nurse in urgent care. Older male patients brought in my family member for foot pain. I take off his shoe and sock and toes were full of live maggots! It was all I could do not to get sick.
That is horrible, as a brand new nurse in long term care I took a dressing off a toe and her toe was necrotic and fell off in my hand! I bout had a stroke!
Kitiger, RN
1,834 Posts
I have taken care of two kids who were developmentally disabled who thought any naughty action was hilarious. They were the best tattletales, as both of them would loudly laugh and laugh at whoever was doing something naughty! It had to do with something about the corpus callosum not functioning properly? I think?