Want to be a nurse, just no butt wiping or other yucky stuff please

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Just a heads up to inquiring people who read this site. Nursing involves butt wiping, blood, snot, urine, etc. An RN by your name doesn't mean others deal with yucky realities of patient care.

Also, you will likely have to pay your dues job wise. You probably won't waltz into your dream job straight out of school. And, whatever job you get, you WILL work your rear end off.

Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

Was precepting a new nurse once where I work. A patient on dialysis pooped himself during treatment (even when they ask to go, it takes a few minutes because we have to rinse back their blood and be sure they are stable to come off). He just could not wait.

He had briefs in his bag, so I put him in his wheelchair on chux, and rolled him to the bathroom. My preceptee let me do all the work and shut the door behind me.

Fine, I can get this. Well, the job was bigger than I thought and I could not singlehandedly hold the man up and wipe his rear end, so I put on the call light. Another nurse came, and I asked her to send in my preceptee, telling him to help me.

He stood at the door, gagging, asking me what he was supposed to do. I said "get your butt in here, shut the door and help me out here"!

He truly had no clue what to do, so I instructed him step by step, while trying recover what little was left of the patient's dignity. He had lost sight of the fact that there was a human being in there to clean up and get back on treatment.

Then he had the gall to accuse me of "using his male strength to my advantage and making him do something he worked in dialysis NOT to have to do" (he did not want to work in a hospital and get the hands dirty; too bad, dialysis can be messy and hard work too!!!)

I set him straight in a private one-to-one talk in our med room after that. Basically telling him to get lost and get another job if he thought he was gonna sit at a desk all day and chart. I guess he realized I was serious after that.

SOMEONE put in his head the idea that we just delegate all that to our technicians. I am unsure who, but I set him straight. Too bad I had to do that at all.

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SmilingBluEyes, what did he do?

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

He held the man up while *I* tore off the dirty brief and wiped the poor man's butt.

He did this kind of a thing a few times, once complaining when I asked him to help Hoyer a rather large, heavy man with no legs to his chair.

Again, with the "me using his male strength to do the heavy work"

Me again, reminding him when he was in middle school, I was moving 100lb dead weight legs of women , who often weighed in excess of 350lb----in labor on epidurals, to change their position, AND cleaning up more blood, poop and amniotic fluid than he could imagine. L and D can be back-breaking work, as anyone who has worked there knows.

And I said, "what is wrong with me using your strength? You are 20 years younger than me, bigger and stronger. WHY should I break my back so you can avoid heavy lifting"? He is also a big man, exceeding 6 feet 4 inches and probably 280lb or so. His strength at his age, and size FAR outweighed mine. I was simply using resources available to me. And I did not just walk away; I helped Hoyer that gentleman safely into his treatment chair.

He got the point after that.

He is still the a nurse, and I hear, his attitude has improved quite a bit. I think he really believed, with his shiny new BSN from a very impressive State University (with HONORS of course!) and his "wonderfulness" he was above such menial labor. Did not realize dialysis can be just that: plain hard physical work. He had wanted to avoid all that, I am sure, which was why he thought dialysis would be a great fit for him. Many people believe, I think, that dialysis is all just watching people sit and get their blood cleaned, that you don't have to get dirty in doing the daily work of being a dialysis nurse or tech. That all that sort of work takes place at the "BED"-side, not an out patient setting.

He had no idea what it was about.

That much was very clear. But who among us knows what all nursing entails until we actually work as NURSES?

He was highly intelligent, learned after a while. Works in a different clinic now and I am supposing, now gets what being a nurse can entail. It's a wakeup call for many of us when we actually start our careers as licensed nurses.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

It just seems a lot of nurse-wanna-bees and new grads don't realize what they have in store in any area of patient care. It's hard, thankless, back-breaking work period. And even IF we do have aides or techs, we can't just simply pull them from other patients' care to do a job WE were EDUCATED and TAUGHT to do ourselves.

Unless they went through all of nursing school never having to care for real human beings who poop, pee, bleed, vomit and blow snot on them, and that I find hard to believe.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Amen to the above! If you can't abide the thought of cleaning up bodily fluids, you can't be a nurse. It's as simple as that.

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Specializes in Gerontology.

But,but but...the nurses on Greys Anatomy don't clean up pts! Or lift them! They just hand the doctor the chart. And then the bot doctor takes them out for long lunches! That is the nursing I signed up for!

And Cherry Ames has all kinds of doctors dating her! So it must be true!

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Had a regular come in on my first night of three. Homeless, etoh, extensive medical hx. Made him shower before I sent him "home" in the morning. Came back the next day with this horrible stench. I asked him what happened. "Slept in my puke, s***my pants, and made a mess pi*****" ok man *sigh*

BSN GCU 2014. ED Residency ;)

Sent from my iPhone using allnurses

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I personally like them fried and served up with some Lawry's seasoning salt. :p

I'll put on a pot of cheese grits and make some biscuits.

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Specializes in hospice.
I'll put on a pot of cheese grits and make some biscuits.

I'll bring the sweet tea. :up:

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sniff, back in the day, I got warning points for saying I liked my young, tender nurses with some mint sauce.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

With fava beans and good keeeeeeeeeeeeeeantie.

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Specializes in CVICU CCRN.
sniff, back in the day, I got warning points for saying I liked my young, tender nurses with some mint sauce.

Gee, and here I thought that @TheCommuter was about to get a Lawry's seasoning salt promotional contract for product placement!! :)

I'm so calloused you would probably need straight MSG to get me prepped. Too much time in psych, social services, medical foster care and on CPS teams prior to nursing. No wonder no one finds me appetizing. I will try not to be spirit wounded over this fact.

;)

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