Poop Free Nursing Jobs in the Hospital?

[IcySageNurse]

Okay, before anyone starts the insane spamming, please READ THE POST. This is not meant to demean or attack any nurses. I am an RN and I love nursing - and I respect everything that nurses do. I know that some people are also better at some things than others. This is meant to be a very respectful post simply asking for some help and advice, so please do not start attacking and saying that I don't "understand" what nursing is. Thank you in advance! :)

Here's the issue: I started a job right out of nursing school with a hospital. I stayed for a few months, but I literally used to want to cry every day that I went. I wasn't overwhelmed by the responsibility or the new things I needed to learn (I actually enjoyed that)...it was the "cleaning" part of our job description. I know it's part of nursing, and I certainly cleaned my patients quickly and extremely well, but not without gagging. I can't help it. I truly find it very disgusting cleaning someones watery feces off of their back, butt, and bed. Everytime I smelled that horrible smell I became sick to my stomach knowing what I was about to have to do. It controlled my life and I was so unhappy I quit.

Fast forward: I work in a primary care office. I love it! No poop, normal hours, etc. I also have developed a passion for family practice, and with so many physicians choosing to specialize instead of work in FP, I see how important NPs will be as more and more Americans are insured under current laws. I want to help fill that void. I could easily go to NP school now, but I feel NPs were developed to expand on their current clinical experience. While I love my job, I honestly don't learn much about medicine, it's mainly vitals and scheduling, etc. I feel to truly become a competent NP and provide high quality care to my patients, I need to work in a hospital environment for a few years so that I can manage my own patients and learn about their conditions and treatments. This of course is an issue considering my previous experience with this...so what can I do??

Any advice? I really need some help here, not 3-4 pages of insults about how I should just learn to love cleaning up poop. I will never love it, and I don't have to love it to be a good nurse. I do respect all of you that do, however, and I'm sure your patients do too! :)

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

If you're going to go to NP school and they'll take you without more bedside experience, just do it. You'll learn what you'll need to learn in the program and in your first few years of practice and it probably won't be including bedside personal care:) . Although at some point you will learn to do a rectal exam. Small potatoes, though.

[JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP]

I am an NP who just started my first job as an NP with no RN experience (not for lack of trying!). I think if your goal is to bet an NP, you can do it without having bedside experience. I don't know if I am a better or worse NP for not having bedside experience (I wanted it badly but couldn't get it), but I just threw myself into this job and I'm learning a lot about how to manage kids with chronic illnesses on an outpatient basis. The MD I work with also does PICU rounds and we often see these kids in follow-up after they're released, so I'm learning more about hospital management of these patients, even though I've never done it first hand.

What I'm trying to say is that each job calls for its own skill set, and that you CAN jump in and learn the NP role without extensive RN experience. The one thing that's probably missing most for me is excellent assessment skills -- you have to listen to lots and lots of lungs and heart sounds and bowel sounds until you're easily able to pick up abnormal findings.

[RNperdiem, RN]

In an acute care setting poop-free = non-bedside nursing like nursing education, nursing infomatics, or management. Those positions are in high demand and difficult to get. You are leaving the office setting to get hands on skills right?

Next step away is poop-lite. You might not totally avoid cleaning up people, but you will see less in cath lab, dialysis and procedural type nursing. While a few nurses are hired without experience into these areas, most employers want skills which are learned in...

The rest of the hospital where you cannot avoid cleaning up poop.

[Asystole RN]

Look into the hospital's ATU or Infusion Center.

[chrisrn24]

Nursing informatics: I'm pretty sure there's no poop involved in that area...just computers.

However, if your main goal is to be a NP, you have to accept the fact that you need to get experience in specialties where you get your hands "dirty", so to speak.

I won't pass judgment as I'm not you and haven't had your experiences in life. But ultimately you have to decide what is more important to you: a career as a NP or the avoidance of poop. Only you can make that decision.

Best of luck.

Perfectly worded.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

The radiology suites of any hospital. . .this specialty is not completely free of fecal matter, but you'll deal with normal working hours and a very minimal amount of poop.

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

I don't know a single nurse who "loves cleaning up poop" and no, you don't have to love it to be a good nurse.

You're clear about your goal (becoming a nurse practitioner). You realize that more bedside practice/experience (here a poop, there a poop, everywhere a poop poop) would help you attain your goal.

How to get out of all those poop poops? I wish I knew (and I have no desire to be a NP, I love bedside care despite the poop poops). I am glad/grateful, however, that you respect the fact that I clean up poop, even though I don't love it. Thankyouverymuch.

I think you DO understand what nursing is. I also think you can't avoid the poop on your way to getting clinical/bedside experience.

Poop is inevitable. What kind of response are you looking for here? Just let your nurse's aides do all the dirty work every time? Walk away from it? I don't see how you can get the experience you want/need without cleaning up poop on occasion.

You don't have to love cleaning it up, you just have to do it sometimes.

These are my thoughts exactly.

[KittyLovinRN]

What about home care nursing? It's great for forcing you to think about and resolve problems, time management, independence, communication and direct patient care without the mess. While I didn't gag at the sight/smell of poo it was something I literally loathed about hospital nursing. I can count on less than one hand the number of times I've touched poo since starting (twice) in September and I volunteered to help, it wasn't expected of me. For patients to be at home they have to have someone caring for them, the home care nurses assess acute illnesses/manage acute problems we aren't expected to perform "clean up" as my boss put it when I had a family member tell me it was my job to do that. (I obliged because the family wouldn't clean the patient up and I didn't want that on my conscious if something happened to her)

Good luck!!

[IcySageNurse]

Thank you everyone for your responses, though I did detect some hostility (surprise, surprise) in some of your responses. To the person who gave the example of the one time a doctor cleaned up poop for a c-dif neighbor - that's an anomaly. If I rarely cleaned up poop and then had one patient who needed it, I would happily do it as I have in the past. That's completely different from waking up EVERY DAY knowing you are going to be cleaning up poop 5-6 times before you even have lunch. It's just not even comparable.

As for "getting over it" - I can't. I really just can't. It disgusts me, it makes me sick. I hate the sight, the smell, everything. I feel so filthy after I clean it up that I often can't eat for the rest of the day. Sucking it up is not an option.

What about the ED? I know things can get messy there, but you don't have incontinent patients laying in their bed all day needing diaper changings and bed baths. How often do ED nurses clean someones poop off them? I'm okay with blood, guts, etc - just not poop.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Thank you everyone for your responses, though I did detect some hostility (surprise, surprise) in some of your responses. To the person who gave the example of the one time a doctor cleaned up poop for a c-dif neighbor - that's an anomaly. If I rarely cleaned up poop and then had one patient who needed it, I would happily do it as I have in the past. That's completely different from waking up EVERY DAY knowing you are going to be cleaning up poop 5-6 times before you even have lunch. It's just not even comparable.

As for "getting over it" - I can't. I really just can't. It disgusts me, it makes me sick. I hate the sight, the smell, everything. I feel so filthy after I clean it up that I often can't eat for the rest of the day. Sucking it up is not an option.

What about the ED? I know things can get messy there, but you don't have incontinent patients laying in their bed all day needing diaper changings and bed baths. How often do ED nurses clean someones poop off them? I'm okay with blood, guts, etc - just not poop.

Oh the ED....no that won't do....if you really can't stand it...not a good place. People come in with food poisoning, lower GI bugs.....elderly that have fallen with 3 day accumilation of urine and feces....homless folks found down....not to mention those individual with the less careful with personal hygiene.....a mask helps, peppermint oil in the mask... I always preferred vicks in my nose and I carried a pocket deodorizer OZIUM....eliminates everything instead of covering.

It takes a while getting used to is but you do.....it's what you make yourself do...none of us like it at all....but I hate sputum more.

Peds might be a good place.

[Horseshoe, BSN, RN]

What about the ED? I know things can get messy there, but you don't have incontinent patients laying in their bed all day needing diaper changings and bed baths. How often do ED nurses clean someones poop off them? I'm okay with blood, guts, etc - just not poop.

Well, you can get the GI bleeders or someone who has explosive diarrhea and can't get to the bathroom.

I worked in critical care and had moved to a step down ICU which was anyone critical who was not on a vent. Ratio of 3:1. I noticed we went from almost strictly cardiology (pre and post cath lab and pre and post CABG) to lots of med surg, particularly the GI bleeders, overdoses, and patients in DT's. One day I had 3 GI bleeders who just couldn't get to the bedside commode in time. I spent the entire day getting one patient cleaned up, sitting down to chart, only to have the other patient hit the call bell with an accident. Got him cleaned up, went to chart, and ding ding! Third patient had busted loose with bloody diarrhea. This literally went on for 12 straight hours. I went home and sobbed and decided that I was burned out, did not study that hard in school, work so hard in my ICU internship, put that many hours into working the units, to spend that much time doing code browns (and happens a lot in ICU in my 10 year experience there since so many of them cannot get out of bed). I gave my notice the next day and took a break of several years to stay home with my kids.

I went back to work with a fresh attitude and now work in a GI lab.

[xokw, BSN, RN]

I don't post too often but you really caught my attention with this one! I 100% understand how you feel as I too have a realllly hard time with this bodily function. I will never get used to it and as such, in similar thinking, chose the ED as the place for my final school placement which ended in April ( hurray!). In the 4 months I was there I saw more BM daily than blood or guts because so many ED patients arrive from LTC (atleast in the ED I was in) for a variety of reasons (gastro, palliative, etc) many of which require briefs due to incontinence. It was not what I expected, but it definitely taught me to expect the unexpected. Best of luck :)