Nursing Duties ??

TweetiePieRN · Sep 6, 2005

"Dirty hands on work". That emcompasses alot. Here are some for ya: bathing people, cleaning up their urine, feces, vomit, sputum. Obtaining samples of urine, feces, sputum. Sometimes you actually get these things thrown at you, or accidentally spilled on you!! Cleaning out tracheostomies, suctioning sputum, cleaning up really bad wounds (smelly ones too!), inserting a catheter into a bladder, giving enemas, inserting suppositories. There are many more I am sure I havent' covered. You get used to dealing with the yuckies.

Nursing is a very rewarding career and we do so much more than "dirty hands on work" as you probably already know.

jmgrn65, RN · Sep 6, 2005

Here is more less dirty, starting iv, giving meds, orally and IV. Assisting Doctors with bedside procedures, some take blood samples, read EKG's, and still lots more. But depending on how much you understand medical you may or may not understand the terminology. Good Luck.

luckymichelle · Sep 6, 2005

I'm a new nurse working on a small hospital's med surg "general everything" floor. I'm also an LPN in school for my RN. Anyway, I team with an RN each day, and although she's covering my work, our typical days are about the same.

Start at 0700, get pt's up and dressed, bathed, toileted, make their beds, clean their rooms, pass breakfast trays, pass meds, chart, do dressing changes, answer bathroom lights, etc.

The rest of the day is about the same. I think it depends on where you work, although I'm sure you've already heard that. I hate to say this, but I really dislike all of the toileting, bathing, changing briefs (yesterday I changed 21 on an eldery woman during an 8 hour shift and I couldn't do anything to help ease her diarrhea). I have gotten used to it since I first started though, and I do love working with the patients. I'm starting another job next month at a long-term care facility where I'll get to have a bit more responsibility and have CNA's to help with answering of lights, etc. Although, unless you are one of those nurses who can ignore a patient's dirty brief until the Aide is available, you'll always do some cleaning of poo. :uhoh21:

I know that some of the bigger hopsitals in my area have CNA's to answer all lights and toilet, while the LPN's an RN's handle their stuff. And, when I work on the OB floor, there isn't anything really messy except the birth itself, which is so cool that I don't care about the bodily fluids going everywhere. So, it really depends. If you think you may want to pursue nursing, I say go for it. You get used to most of the dirty stuff, and you don't have to work in an area that requires to do non-stop brief changes. :imbar

Hope that helps!

Michelle :)