This is not my job?!?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I am a student and my pt couldn't make it to the bathroom. Poop all over the floor. I went out in the hall and told a housekeeper staff member what had happened and asked her to clean it very politely. I also suggested a mop would be useful (wet poop). She caught the biggest attitude and asked me why I couldn't do it. I said if I had the cleaning materials I'd have no problem. Then her friend (male) told her to calm down, which made her even more enraged. Long story short, it took her 4.5 hrs to finally clean it up.

First of all, that really isn't an rn's job, or should I say priority. Second of all, that is why she gets paid, or a tech's job? How should I have handled this?:confused::confused::confused:

Specializes in Pediatrics, Nursing Education.

its unacceptable that you let it sit there for 4.5 hours in a patient room. if i was your nursing instructor i would have failed you for the clinical day. you should have tried to clean it up best you could and then got housekeeping to come and do their job. while housekeeping should have came to help you since they were on site when you asked them, when they did not you should have done your best and reported it to your nursing supervisor. cleaning up poop and other "messes" is a daily part of any nurses job. so, get used to it!

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Specializes in Operating Room Nursing.
its unacceptable that you let it sit there for 4.5 hours in a patient room. if i was your nursing instructor i would have failed you for the clinical day. you should have tried to clean it up best you could and then got housekeeping to come and do their job. while housekeeping should have came to help you since they were on site when you asked them, when they did not you should have done your best and reported it to your nursing supervisor. cleaning up poop and other "messes" is a daily part of any nurses job. so, get used to it!

If I was your nursing instructor I would tell you to read the entire thread first.

To the OP for the benefit of us all please answer these three questions.

1. How much poo was left on the floor for the 4.5 hours. Was there any poo there at all or did the floor just need mopping.

2. What education have you received about poo cleaning duties at your nursing school.

3. If you could go back in time or the same thing happened again what would you do? Would you do anything different or do exactly the same thing you did the first time.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
ATTENTION....ATTENTION....THE POO WAS CLEANED UP BY THE OP. THEY DID NOT LEAVE A HUGE PILE OF FAECES ON THE FLOOR SHE JUST WANTED THE USE OF A MOP.

Please read this thread. I'm getting a bit tired of seeing people bang on about how the OP left a huge pile of poo in the patients room for 4.5 hrs when they aren't reading the entire thread. .Yes it's 11 pages long but to save embarrassment later on if your going to tell someone off then it always pays to have read everything :nuke: As for backpedalling and lying to cover up, i don't think there is enough information from their first and second post to actually accuse them of lying really..... One poster even said they feared the OP would never learn from this. Geez it must be really hard being perfect......

And um...this is a nursing student so go easy. Maybe they are not well informed on what to do in this situation. And (gasp) perhaps that's why they have posted here on allnurses so they can ask for some advice from experienced nurses...

I really can't understand why certain people on this site get their knickers in a knot when an inexperienced person doesn't do the 100% right thing. Nursing has a very steep learning curve, why make it harder than it has to be?

To the OP: if this is a problem with this particular patient then critical thinking tells me if he can't hold it in long enough to make it to the bathroom he needs a commode chair. I'm wondering why the nurses in this area haven't done this already.

A few years ago I also had a run in with a cleaner over the issue of poo. The patient did a splatter poo in the toilet bowl and the cleaner expected me to clean it up. If it was on the floor anywhere, in the patients bed, whatever then fine i'll clean it. But this poo made it to the toilet so as far as I was concerned the toilet bowl is the cleaners domain, not the nurses, i'm not doing it. It escalated pretty far to the point where the CNC became involved and I did not back down.I won the argument when I reminded the all that nurses do not go round the hospital inspecting each toilet for poo stains and cleaning them. The cleaners are there to sanitise the toilet bowls not the nurses.

I do not have a problem whatsoever with the phase 'it's not my job'. I have been known to say it when I need to. If you want to do the work of everyone, the ward clerk, the cleaners, the orderlies etc then fine that's up to you, I hope it gives you a warm and glowing feeling and makes you feel special. But there is a point where you have to say ' it's not my job to do this' otherwise they'll just pile more and more work onto you because your too willing to do what others should be doing. This has happened in our operating theatres where we no longer have theatre orderlies because too many nurses were willing to do their jobs so management took them away.

I did read it all, and like I stated in my post, I think that if the second post happened as it was stated, the first post wasn't relevant. The OP doesn't make sense once the second post was added, and I would think that's why people continue to post on the issue.

There is a HUGE difference between "that's not my job" and "I don't have time to do that." There isn't really anything, to me, that isn't "my job," but that doesn't mean that I CAN and WILL do it all, just because I am physically ABLE. If I have time, that's great, I have no problem with it. Doing everything no matter what else is going on is what gets you in trouble. Saying "that's not my job" implies that you're too good to do something. For example, on my floor we often work on teams, RN and CNA. GENERALLY speaking, the CNA would be responsible for the baths/personal care, since many of the things the patients need in a night she CAN'T do. I do not, however, think that doing all of the patients' personal care ISN'T my job. If we have 7 patients, there is no reason I can't do some of them. If I have a particulary large amount of evening meds to pass, and a patient is ready to be cleaned up for the night, I'll ask my CNA if she can do it, since I have to do x, y, and z. I do not say, can you give so-and-so a bath, that's not my job. I don't stick my head out the door and flag down a housekeeper and say, can you empty these garbage cans, "that's not my job." I'll say, I am in the middle of *whatever*, will you please empty these for me? There is a big difference in that.

I also certainly wouldn't want to see any positions eliminated due to nursing taking on duties that there are people hired to do. We recently added aides to our dietary department to pass meal trays, it was always a nursing task before that. It got to be difficult to get them all passed in a timely manner. One evening at supper, everyone on the floor was relatively caught up, and some of our CNA's were passing dinner trays. While I don't have a problem with anyone helping each other out, I actually asked them not to....I said to the CNA's, we have to make sure to let the dietary aides pass the trays, because if we do too much to help them, we're going to think we don't need any more, and get rid of them! We might have time tonight, but usually we don't, so we want to make sure we keep them here!

It's all in how you present the situation, and it's all about teamwork. As soon as you make someone feel like you think you're better than them, they will do as little as they can to help you. If you make them feel like you're on the same side, it's amazing how they will go out of their way for you. The words 'it's not my job' will alienate someone faster than any other phrase.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
If I was your nursing instructor I would tell you to read the entire thread first.

To the OP for the benefit of us all please answer these three questions.

1. How much poo was left on the floor for the 4.5 hours. Was there any poo there at all or did the floor just need mopping.

2. What education have you received about poo cleaning duties at your nursing school.

3. If you could go back in time or the same thing happened again what would you do? Would you do anything different or do exactly the same thing you did the first time.

If I was YOUR nursing instructor, the first thing I would tell YOU is to stop assuming things...as in, that not everyone isn't reading the entire thread. :down:

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Specializes in Operating Room Nursing.
If I was YOUR nursing instructor, the first thing I would tell YOU is to stop assuming things...as in, that not everyone isn't reading the entire thread. :down:

Umm there are thankfully a few people here who have bothered reading the entire thread, but many who haven't. Jeepgirl is obviously one of them:

"Its unacceptable that you let it sit there for 4.5 hours in a patient room. if i was your nursing instructor i would have failed you for the clinical day. you should have tried to clean it up best you could and then got housekeeping to come and do their job. while housekeeping should have came to help you since they were on site when you asked them, when they did not you should have done your best and reported it to your nursing supervisor. cleaning up poop and other "messes" is a daily part of any nurses job. so, get used to it!"

Sounds pretty identical to all the other comments 'how dare you let it sit there for 4.5 hrs blah blah'.

The reason I told her to read the entire thread is because if you read her post she says "you should have tried to clean it up best you could and then got housekeeping to come and do their job"....

Ummm isn't that what the OP said she actually did anyway.....that's just hilarious :chuckle

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