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! :)
Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
Not to be rude, but how on Earth did you get through clinicals? If you didn't like the "dirty" part of nursing, then why did you bother to, I don't know, become a nurse?
Feces, blood, vomit, spit...it is all apart of the job. You take the good with the bad, and if you can't tolerate the bad, find another profession.
That's not very polite. She's already explained herself amply regarding her goals. Let's encourage her to find a solution that works for her, not tear her down.
I think most of us have some aspect of nursing/healthcare that we can't quite stomach. I could never work in the OR or in any sort of trauma capacity. The sight of someone being cut open and seeing their organs exposed is too much for me. I almost fainted when I watched a surgeon hold a pts bowels in his hands. I know, especially as a guy, I'm supposed to find OR and first response "cool" and exciting, but I just find it disgusting and horrific. Doesn't mean there aren't tons of nursing jobs out there I can do.
An aversion to poop narrows down your choices, med-surg and ICU are out of the question. But any decent sized hospital has outpatient surgery. Or a dialysis unit. Or an IV team.
I wouldn't assume any inpatient hospital floor to be free of poop, though. Telemetry floors and cardiac post op floors have poop daily, I'm sure. Anytime someone's sick enough to be an inpatient, there's a good chance they're too sick to be continent.
Not to be rude, but how on Earth did you get through clinicals? If you didn't like the "dirty" part of nursing, then why did you bother to, I don't know, become a nurse?
Feces, blood, vomit, spit...it is all apart of the job. You take the good with the bad, and if you can't tolerate the bad, find another profession.
I knew when I posted this that there would be that ONE person who offers nothing constructive, but takes out her own frustrations on me. What was the point in your post? Do you really think I'm just going to take my four years of nursing education and throw it away? As a mature adult, I am doing the responsible thing here, which is trying to seek advice on how to find another way to practice nursing that is more tolerable to me. Don't be a sourpuss.
Think back: what did you want to accomplish when you posted your comment? Make me feel bad? Make yourself feel better about something? Don't be that kind of person.
To everyone else - thank you for the suggestions! I will try to look into some of them.
I have friends who smell vomit and vomit (and they're CA RNs!), friends who can't take copious amounts of poo, and friends who can't hack c-diff.
I once had (and got through a 12 hour shift with) a patient with pseudomonas in his trach. OMG. Again - OMG. Poor, poor man. Literally, I cannot do that again. Ever.
Have you tried Vick's under your nose, or a natural form of the same thing, like peppermint salve (you can get that in places like Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and even some swankier Targets and other grocery stores)?
I get the whole 'you can't avoid it' stance here, but still - there are some people who just can't hack certain things. Doesn't make them a non-candidate. I've known parents who can't take poo! (My sister and her husband used to trade off - one took poo and one took vomit - sort of like Jack Sprat! And my own has already begged me to take him seriously if he looks at me over some sort of bodily fluid and says, "I'm sorry - I can't." Although the time the dog had unreal diarrhea and I was at work he did perform rather admirably.)
At least she knows what she can hack. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.
I once was going for a teaching degree (about a thousand years ago, before I was enlisted USAF and before a few other things happened to me), and was pilloried and I daresay villified for saying 'I can't do special education/special reading/below grade level; I can't hack it - I wouldn't be fair." Oh, Lord, the class was ready for a lynching. The professor calmed them down and asked me why. I said, "I would feel sorry for them and want to do for them, and that's not what those kids need. They need a different kind of patience from what I have."
I would be useless to those sweet little kids. And OP wouldn't be much use to someone with a bed full of poo.
I'd rather come in to report and have an RN say to me, "They gave me a c-differ who poos like a water hose. Please - I'll take your 'worst' pt in exchange; I can't hack poo. I'll be sick." In fact, I've done it it for folks, and while that doesn't make me some sort of god, I hope it makes me a team player. (By the same token, no more infected trachs. No. I'm sorry. I can't hack it.)
Problem is, you don't always work with people who want things to be a team effort. Sorry - but it's true.
OP, to reach your goals, you just may have to get your hands in a bit of poo. But it's not always the case once you're out of school - and I don't mean handing it off to the CNAs all the time, either. You just might find that if you REAAAALLLLLLLYYYYY want to do this, you'll grit your teeth and forage on, damn the poo-pedoes, and you'll do just fine.
Of course not! Why in the world would you say such a thing simply because I want her to know that cath lab may have critical care requirements?! I'm all for the OP reaching her goal of finding work where she feels happy. But she needs to know how to get there, and working in ICU or telemetry will not give her a poop free experience. So I don't want her getting all fired up for cath lab if that is going to require her to put in a few years of ICU. She WON'T like it.
I must be very fortunate or have exceptional aids. I have had to help clean poop a handful of times in one year as an RN in a LTC facility. Currently I am on the rehab unit where most are not incontinent. I have worked on units where the residents were total care. The aids would fall over themselves getting to it before they let the nurses do it. It wasn't a matter of not wanting to help which actually I can handle a nasty trach over poop or a colostomy, but I haven't had the poop experience other bedside nurses are discussing. I know nurses who can't handle sputum and aren't looked down on the same way it appears nurses who can't handle poop are.
But she doesn't really need ICU experience to pursue a higher degree, does she? That's not a requirement, I don't think.
I got the gist that she feels she needs "real nurse" experience to be a good APN. But we get too hung up on this thinking that the only "real" nurses are bedside acute care nurses working on a med-surg or ICU floor. If her experience is as a doctors office nurse or a dialysis clinic nurse, that's "real" nurse experience, too.
this made me smile. who loves poop. Perhaps choose ambulatory care ? I don't mind poop........but i honestly don't deal with it that often. sputum ...is very difficult for me. i will be dry heaving if sputum can be heard or seen ............therefore i do not work on our respiratory specialty floor. i don't think you can get away from it but you can possibly minimize it. I am also planning on starting my fnp soon and i will stay where i am because i am constantly learning. I think if you go in with the context that it is going to help you achieve your next goal it probably won't be as traumatic for you because you will know this is just a temporary thing. Good luck.
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Anoetos, BSN, RN
738 Posts
OMG! Why would you want to? Poop is glorious! The looser and blacker and tarrier the better!