Roaches are going to drive me out of home care!!!

Specialties Home Health

Published

I feel like I should be called the Orkin Nurse, and instead of a backback, I should carry an orificenal of roach-killing chemicals.

I need a roach repellant perfume or something.

Yesterday MONSTER roach appeared too close to my coat, and I swear I could barely focus on my new admit, and I admit, I skimmed that OASIs faster than fast to get the heck outta there!

Today, very clean house, in the midst of several abandoned ones boarded up in a drug-infested neighborhood, and I know that is always a bad thing, a draw for roaches and rodents, and it isn't the fault or lack of cleanliness of the people I serve but ...

People I have a serious issue, fear-factor, r/t roaches. I am not sure I could even get away w asking not to be sent there, it wouyld only mean some other poor nurse gets stuck w that many more roach motels.

Let me put it this way, if I were on that show fear factor and I could be given a million dollars to enter a room swarming w roaches, I would probably hurl at the thought.

Today, sitting in this clean rose among the thorns, and here comes da beast, crawling up the couch I was just sitting on, once again too close to my personal stuff. At least in the summer, I don't have a coat or so many pockets and stuff w me for the creepy critters to hide in.

I can't function like this, I get tunnel vision, and I do struggle to keep cool and remain non-judgemental, esp w the older folks.

Help me!! Should I seek deconditioning? I think this is NORMAL to not like roaches. Yesterday's man carried his med zippered bag in and tried to hand it to me w a monster roach on it!! I asked him to set it on the table and take out the bottles one by one so we could review it, I wasn't touching that freakin bag!!

I have been going into the dregs of the city w/o a roach-free home lately, and I can't take it much longer. I am not only afraid of these things touching me, or getting into my clothes, but of bringing them into my home by accident. My winter coat is still in my car b/c I was afraid to bring it inside. I am seriously stressing here!!!

What would you do? I have no problem w dogs, snakes, or other creatures, just bugs tarantula spiders, roaches, NASTY stuff.

Specializes in cardiac ICU.

ROACHES IN BEDS? How absolutely disgusting. I've worked in two hospitals over the last five years and I've never heard of such a thing. How sad for a bedbound TF patient to have to share their bed with insects. YUCK.

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Specializes in NICU.

This thread really makes me feel guilty about being disgusted whenever a gnat is flying around my hospital unit!

One of our unit's HH nurses also encountered chickens living in a Chicago apartment, just running around with the kids. I once defrosted some breastmilk to give to a baby at work, and thank god I noticed the brown specks at the bottom before I fed him - baby cockroaches! I once read about a peds HH nurse who was concerned because there were always clumps of old blood whenever she suctioned this one baby's trach. According to lab analysis, it wasn't blood - baby cockroaches again!

:eek:

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Oh gads! Why can't I stop reading this thread?

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Yikes! I hate roaches too.I do home health as well but haven't really had a problem with this. I only saw a roach one time in one house. Most of my patients are in pretty clean houses and don't have a problem with this. I would be most scared of bringing one into my house and having them multiply. I'm not the best housekeeper and don't have enough time to clean like I want being in school full time and working weekends, plus my two little ones have a habit of getting crumbs everywhere, so I know they would have a field day in my house if they got here. :stone

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Specializes in ED staff.

I HATE ROACHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Theway I figure it is like this... should I do something really terrible and get sent to Hell, there will be roaches everywhere. Lucifer himself will be one of those hissing roaches from Madagascar, they will be in my food, in my hair, crawling allover me. I'm doing the gross-me-out dance as I am typing this, lol! ;) WR

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Well I was moving to Florida for Home Health Care.....now maybe not..yuk!

Su360

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Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, Home Health, Oncology.

Hi

Worked 10 trs. in Home Health in Chicago!! Encountered many places filled with roaches, rats mean dogs; also lots of places with dog urine & poop all over; even had roaches crawling over the patients bed!!

You Teach, Teach, Teach!! Bring only the bare necessities into the home.

However, in the end, it was the paper work that did me in!! Oasis, etc.

Mary Ann

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Specializes in MS Home Health.

Seen many a bed with roaches.

renerian

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Not in those neighborhoods, trust me, I should carry an uzi!

Plus, in the high rise, there is like no where to park. Today I parked in a church lot and walked a block b/c the parking garage has been shut down (maybe roaches took it over??) , not that I felt safe in that underground one anyway, but then we sometime will also have 2 or 3 people in a building (talk about punishment) so going back to the car is not an option, I'm usually relieved each time I go out and see my car still there!

Poor thing, the roach thing is just plain nasty. Ever think about moving to Montana. Don't see much for those nasty bugs in Montana.

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OMG-

After reading this thread, I do not think I would ever work in home care as an RN. I did as a CNA, but that was in a very ritzy retirement community- never saw a single bug in a home there.

I had imagined home-care nursing allowed nurses to really get to know their pts, and I dreamed of what it must be like to only have to care for one pt at a time.

I never imagined the horrors described here.

My hat is off to all of you.

Home care cinsists of both "visits" and shifts with pts for a variety of "problems."

Visits generally revolve around pt teaching, wound care, etc.

Shifts are anything from 4 hours to 12 or 13 hours for pts who require full-time skilled nursing care. Often these are on vents or are quite fragile for a number of reasons. Some just require st caths, daily care, tube feeds, central line fluids, etc.

I refuse to do visits because of the bug issues. HOwever, when I go to a home for a shift and there are bugs, I will complete the shift but I do not return. There ARE nurses who don't have so much difficulty with bugs and they do fill those spots.

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OMG! I have done a few home visits where the living conditions were deplorable and the health dept/ss had to be notified...garbage, feces, flies, and various other insects and their larvae, infants and patients all coexisting...yucckkk...gives me the willies thinking about it.

That Fear Factor' show with the roaches crawling over the guest freaks me out!!! :uhoh21:

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Specializes in Everything but psych!.

Roaches are one of the reasons I left Hawaii. I couldn't deal with the 5" (no kidding) long roaches. I even ran away from them. One evening came home and turned on the light and EEEEK :eek: right in front of my nose. Sure don't miss that part of Hawaii, living now in snow country.

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