Anyone Squeamish?

[nursingasanart]

Hey all!!!

This is my first post and I'm so excited I found this site! I was an art history student and had one of those "aha!" moments and am now changing to nursing. I really look forward to doing something that will give me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, but what had deterred me from really pursuing nursing in the first place is that I tend to get grossed out easily on particular things like the noise someone makes when vomiting (I begin to retch!) or the smell of puke, too.

Also, poop and pee and blood aren't too bad for me, although if it smelled particularly bad I might gag. And then, sometimes if I am watching discovery health channel or something like that, and there is a very graphic surgery in which they are sucking fat out or pulling out entrails, I get pretty queasy!

I know that I want to be a nurse so bad, and they say that you can always get past it. I sure do hope so! I was just curious if any of you have dealt with similar problems and how you got over them?

I'll be doing CNA training this summer and hear I'll be knee deep in gross stuff.

Hi to all!

[AmericanChai]

You'll get used to it. :) I was and am still kinda squeamish but I guess after deciding to be a nurse I'm making myself get used to it and kinda detach from the ick factor. My daughter has a gtube and there's a lot that goes along with that, but somehow her being my daughter, it never grossed me out. I was quite proud of myself when I took my other child to urgent care a couple weeks ago and there was a child vomiting yellow bile into a bowl. Normally that would make me vomit too but I didn't even feel like it.

I have been taking Bio this semester and I just kinda think about the technical aspect of what it is, how it's made and by what cells in the body. Somehow that detaches me.

When I was training to be a doula (birth assistant) I found that sucking very strong mints helped a lot.

[mkeep74]

This is sooo funny! I have a VERY acute sense of smell. I've always been able to tell what perfume a person is wearing, can notice different notes in a good wine and so forth. When I did my first clinical in nursing school, I thought I was going to be sick every day. I would literally go home every day and rinse the inside of my nostrils because otherwise I would go the rest of the day wondering why I was still smelling poo. I don't know if the memory of the smell stayed with me or if the smell was jsut embedded in my nose after spending so much time around it, but usually "cleaning" my nose after clinical seemed to work. C-Diff is bad!!!! I also had a pt. w/ cancer who's urostomy drainage was just beyond belief. One of my resident's vomited on the floor in the hallway and I had to clean it up so noone would step in it or slip in it and choked and gagged the whole time. Also had a woman who I had to cath, whose genital area gave off a very foul odor. This woman had a neurogenic bladder and had orders to be cathed twice during my shift. NICE. Plenty of more bad smells but not enough time to list them. My point is, I tend to get through it every day. I even manage to go immediately afterwards and wash my hands and go on dinner break to eat. If you had told me a couple of years ago that I could do this, I wouldn't have believed you.

I've also had throughout my life, an inordinate fear of dead bodies. I don't know why it never occured to me, but when someone first brought up post mortum care in nsg. school, I was like NO WAY. I still get slightly dizzy when dealing with a dead body, but I get through it. I guess I just handle it better now. You get used to it. Someone's gotta do it. These people can't do it for themselves, so you just step up and push through.

Try the tricks listed, and yes, if you really have a problem it is perfectly ok to wear a mask. Good Luck.

[mkeep74]

Also, forgot to mention this, but at least half the time your so much into data collection and what this smell of poo or pee can tell you about your pt's condition that, you may notice the smell, but your mind is more busy on the technical aspect of things and you're able to focus more on that than the smell.

[cybernurse81]

this post made me smile, im not really squeamish, only when it comes to dentures. taking them out, touching them or cleaning a patients dentures freaks me out, i have always had this kind of phobia, but still put myself through it on a daily basis at work. I am also squeamish when it comes to eye surgery, as a student nurse i attended surgery with an opthalmic surgeon, he began poking around the patients eye area, and taking swabs from behind the patients eyes, it was gross, and before i knew it i was sat in an office drinking some sweet tea. Im english, but i hate tea! i don't remember anything else, the doctor said i went white and then felll to the floor! needless to say i don't work in that department now. lol

[aerorunner80, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN]

:welcome:

I have things that make me queasy too but it's not what I expected. I expected vomit and feces to make me gag but what really gets me is urine, especially when it is highly concentrated! I don't know why but it will make me gag almost every time! Vomit or the sounds that go along with it don't bother me and for the most part feces don't bother me (unless they have c-diff!!! then I'm toast).

In the grand scheme of things though, they don't really matter. What matters is your patient as a whole and soon enough these things really do become secondary. When I go in to take care of a pt, my main concern is their safety and comfort and as soon as I finish a "yucky" task, I'm over it and talking to my pt like nothing is wrong because it is all about them. Nursing is so great. I love it. BTW, I'm a CNA working on my BSN.