Poop in nursing

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I am an RN. My niece is 18 and hoping to go to nursing school. Recently she told me that there will be no poop cleaning at her nursing school or in the hospital she plans to work in. "I am not going to be THAT kind of nurse. I won't have to change adult diapers."

I was shocked when I heard this! Why had I and all of my nursing coworkers chosen "poop" nursing schools! Where is this special poop free hospital?

Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Isn't it funny that we take a certain stoic pride in cleaning up all this poop and snot and blood. And we have to be, nothing is worse for pt morale than seeing ones nurse lose their mind over the results of a GI bleed or whatever.

It's also cool to see some young doctors unable to control their faces in the presence of this stuff and to see them step aside and give the nurse a sort of plaintive "save me!" look.

Maybe I'm the naive one but I went into nursing knowing that I'll be dealing with bodily fluids on a regular basis. Human beings eat, sleep and :poop:. Our first rotation was in a LTC facility and I am so thankful that I learned the fundamentals of skin care, feeding, positioning etc. to the point that it becomes second nature. I agree with previous posts that the bronchial secretions are the worst and just hearing someone snort up a loogie gives me chills :yuck:. I think too many people go into nursing thinking it's like scrubs or greys anatomy.

I like they irony that your screen name is "stay humble"

What does my humility have to do with my statement?

Specializes in Geriatrics, Cardiology..

Even as a CNA I've changed colostomy bags plenty of times myself after being delegated and cleaned/emptied...

It did help by putting hand sanitizer underneath my nose a few times.

Maybe I'm the naive one but I went into nursing knowing that I'll be dealing with bodily fluids on a regular basis. Human beings eat, sleep and :poop:. Our first rotation was in a LTC facility and I am so thankful that I learned the fundamentals of skin care, feeding, positioning etc. to the point that it becomes second nature. I agree with previous posts that the bronchial secretions are the worst and just hearing someone snort up a loogie gives me chills :yuck:. I think too many people go into nursing thinking it's like scrubs or greys anatomy.

I think that's a big problem nowadays, given the content of TV shows. There's another active thread on AN right now about public misconceptions about nursing. Those misconceptions are not at all uncommon, even among nursing students. It's hard to know til you go (pardon the pun).

So thankful that there are people willing to clean others when they can't do it themselves. I only had to have someone clean me up a handful of times, but I felt embarrassed they had to do so, I feel by having someone do that I'm degrading them. A nurse noticed tears in my eyes as she was cleaning me up and asked what was wrong, I told her I feel like I'm degrading you by having you do this. She told me she did not feel that way at all and its her job to clean up patients who can't. I have a hard time accepting any form of help, I don't know if its because I can't walk or just being stubborn, but never the less I'm thank for the people who help me.

Specializes in labor & delivery.

On my very first day of clinicals my patient was a paraplegic with C-Diff. I was worried it would scare me out of the program. It was a very educational and humbling experience. I clean poop on a regular basis in L&D. We don't have techs or cnas there.

I don't know about you but when I'm "cleaning poop", I can close the door to the patient's room and escape away from all the sensory overload even if it's just a few minutes!

I have never seen so much poop in my life until I became a nurse.

I have become a master of dulcolax suppositories.

I also help our technicians clean some of the real messy incidents.

Teamwork makes the job easier.

Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

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Everyone poops. I am a ns working as a Cna. You get used to it. And it's better than being in the room when some one vomits. Now that gets me. And our rns help with poop. As everyone' poops.

The millenium generation kids expect their iPhone to do everything for them. Please discourage her while you can before she becomes one of those miserable nurses that we unfortunately come across almost on a daily basis. I have disimpacted patients with my digits and I am not talking about 1 2,3,......[/quote']

There's an APP for that?

Not sure I'd wanna put my ear to the phone afterwards :eek

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