Need some insight!

Hey Anxious,

Thats not silly at all,I am in the same boat! I wish I could give you advice based on experience,but I'm just as nervous as you are..lol. However,my theory is that the more you're exposed to it,the easier it will become for you to deal with..(hopefully anyway) especially since its part of the job description. Good luck and have a great weekend.

Christine

I would think that in nursing school they start with the basic's which is Cleaning up all the nasty you mentioned. I was like you at first but it dosent bother me at all. I mean it is still nasty but hey its the line of work we chose and it makes it better when you knwo you are helping someone. You'll get used to it.

i am at the end of my first year of nursing. i hate feces and vomit. but something strange happens when i went into the hospital. the smells and such didn't cause that same visceral reaction it would have at home or anywhere else.

it was this sudden realization that these people are SICK. sick enough that they can't help but make a mess in the bed, puke all over the wall. and i am there to try to help them. and helping them includes not vomiting because they smell gross. they are people that need to be respected and have the best done to keep their dignity intact. THAT was more important than my disdain to bodily fluids. that thought suddenly permeated through me on my first clinical at the hospital, and the icky stuff wasn't as bad as i thought it would be.

and yes, on the outside the feces and vomit gross me out. it sometimes grosses me out thinking about what was in the hospital after the fact. but in the hospital i hold it together. and then my classmates and i share our stories and laugh like drunken idiots.

Thank you guys. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

This may sound silly but...I will be applying to nursing school next Fall and I am worried that I might have some complications with nursing because I don't have the strongest stomach. I talked to a RN about my concern and she explained that just about everyone has a certain weakness (vomit, blood, feces...etc.) But I am a little uneasy about all of the above. Will they slowly introduce the students to the less than pretty situations, or are you just expected to be able to handle these things coming into the program?

Well, to be blunt, either you're going to get over queasies or you're not. Hopefully, you'll be like most students and get past it! I don't know a single nurse who doesn't have a "thing" with something. For me, it's phlegm: I don't know why, but if I am suctioning a trach I have NO problem with it (hole directly into throat), but an ET tube (down the throat through mouth) that needs suctioing will cause me to gag and tear up (and trust me, that's not easy to hide from patient, but CAN be done!!). Too strong a gag reflex

Anyway, there will be something you just have a hard time dealing with. As long as it's not EVERYTHING , you'll be fine.

My first week in clinical rotation, all I had was Poop Patrol: my patient managed to be in a constant state of Poop Mess, and when I had a free minute from that, my classmates needed help with...what else....their patients' poop. :chair: We all survived.

Before I began nursing school, I was deathly afraid of venipuncture and IV starts (either giving OR receiving). Many people told me I was crazy to think I could get through nursing school because of my fear, but I wanted to be a nurse so bad that I went ahead in school and just hoped that my fear would subside. And you know what, it did. I'm not sure how, but once we were learning those skills in school I did sort of just "get over it." Nursing is no different than anything else in life - you take the good with the bad. I believe that I just wanted so bad to be a nurse that I wasn't going to let anything keep me from it.

I hope we both learn to get over it! I do not have a very strong stomache. I'm worried about it, but I just hope exposure will help me learn to deal with it. The first few times, I might need to carry my own barf bag