OK, here's my POV. If, during initial rounds, for instance, I would find a patient lying in poop but otherwise in no distress, and the poop wasn't all over the bed, I might tell that person I'd be right back to help get them cleaned up, *or* ring for my tech if there happened to be one (I didn't always have one!). If it was a total mess, of course I'd have to attend to it right away and the rest of the rounds would wait a bit. It kind of depended on how many patients I had too--bear in mind that I usually worked in critical care/tele/stepdown, so no more than 5 generally. I often, though not always, found that family members, if they were present, were surprisingly willing to help!
But there's a story attached to this. Several years ago when my father was in the hospital one of us stayed with him constantly because he had dementia. We tried to do pretty much everything for him without calling for assistance. He was very weak and required assistance to the BSC, which my brothers could do but I couldn't without help because I am quite a bit smaller than they are. So this one particular day, his nurse was a guy who, years ago, had been a nursing supervisor at a hospital where I was new grad and had chastised me one night for "expecting techs to do things which i could do myself" such as changing patients or helping them to the toilet (never mind I was still trying to figure out then how to do my job and was still always behind!). I recognized his name but he didn't recognize me after 25 years. At one point I rang for someone to help me get my dad to the BSC and was told someone would be there shortly, but no one showed up. meanwhile, this nurse was outside the door in our pod, I heard him chit-chatting with another nurse, and I heard his phone go off....but neither he nor anyone else showed up. I rang again 5 minutes later and it ended up almost being too late before a tech showed up. She apologized, saying two of the techs on the floor had called in. She also ended up having to clean the floor as Dad was in such a hurry. Think I was mad at that nurse? You bet! It would have taken just a couple minutes of his precious chatting time! I almost said something to his charge nurse but didn't. I did, however, leave his name out of the thank-you note I sent to the floor, where I mentioned the other nurses and the techs by name. I know, little revenges aren't nice.
