What is your least favorite.....

RN~in~CT · Oct 31, 2003

My least favorite thing is suctioning ~ just the sound of it gets me....and the WORST is having to suction a trach!!

Ok, now even thinking about it is making me nauseous!

:eek:

Rapheal · Oct 31, 2003

Dealing with active conscious patients with tubes. Chest tubes, NG tubes. These people get up and ambulate to do whatever and I get a nervous sweaty feeling just waiting for them to pull them out. Hate it. And they always promise to get you to help them ambulate-then you go to check on them and their in the bathroom! (Usually the activity level ordered is up to BSC but I have observed patients stretching their limits.)

Second least favorite is working with patients with Chrons' disease who have an activity level of up ad lib. Put a BSC in the room and the next thing you know they are yelling for help and they are halfway to the bathroom with poop all over them, the floor, the bed. And they are tangled up in their IV line and their oxygen tubing.

Love my patients but we get alot of ETOH abusers who are admitted for medical reasons and I see alot of the before mentioned problems. Makes for a nervewracking night on a floor with no aides.

Burnt Out, ASN, RN · Oct 31, 2003

being in a very bad "code brown."

and sputum can gross me out too.... and i work on a pulmonary floor! :chuckle

kids · Oct 31, 2003

I will be the first person to call me weird.

-I LOVE wounds; big gnarly gaping, oozing, purulent, necrotic, gangrenous even.

-Ostomies don't bother me a bit, it is very satisfying to have a new ostomy patient tell me that they were repulsed with their own body but my actions/reactions helped them be more comfortable. I probably would be a wound/ostomy nurse if you didn't need a BSN to get the certification (going back to school violates my code of laziness).

-Suctioning is great, even trachs with big smelly wads of stinky pseudomonas secretions, it is really kewl when it fills the whole suction tubing and goes splat in the suction cannister.

-GI bleeds spewing from either end don't bother me either. I hear it is really an awful smell, I don't know...near as I can figure I don't smell them the way other people do.

However,

I will NOT do eyes...except for drops. Nope, nada, not this girl, it ain't happening. I just can't do it, can't even cope with doing contact lenses in another persons eye never mind anything that has to do with a glass eye or (gag) an eye socket. I will trade ANY task with another for them to do eye stuff. I vomited in A&P while my partner disected the cow eye ball.

gizzy76 · Oct 31, 2003

The worst for me is phlegm with suctioning! I can't stand the noise it makes! Just makes me gag over and over again, more than one person who's been there watching or assisting has had a laugh or two at my expense!

Sometimes bowel movements and cleaning them up get me as well. Right now we have a patient who has C-diff and we didn't know it yet and I got called out from my supper break to help her to the toilet b/c we were really busy. Well, she did her job and I was trying to flush the toilet and clean up her mess when I started to gag. Her BM looked like the chili I had been eating for supper. Needless to say, some bile came up and I threw up in her toilet.:imbar

Bring on the blood and guts, I'm in there like a dirty shirt...those other things though...yuck!

jadednurse · Oct 31, 2003

Any gross skin thing bothers me...burns, grafts, rashes, weeping edema, etc.\

Icky bad!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Oct 31, 2003

What I really hate at work is paperwork, having to deal with irritable demanding stupid families, and having to discipline/write up coworkers.

The icky stuff usually doesn't bother me.

TeenyBabyRN · Oct 31, 2003

ITA 3rdshiftguy! Irritable and demanding people are the WORST part of the job.

As for the icky stuff - I can stand to look at almost anything as long as I don't have to smell it! Odors put me over the edge every time! I heave and gag until I get away from it or puke (or collapse from trying to hold my breath.)

SmilingBluEyes · Oct 31, 2003

I am not a big fan of any of the "grossies", but having someone vomit on me ranks down there in least faves', I tell ya. I remember a girl who had been drinking a LOT of grape juice who dressed me up in her purple puke w/o warning. She did not even say she felt sick ...I wanted to run screaming......covered up in purple stuff like BARNEY the DINOSAUR was so......ah ya know.....anyhow, UGH.....that set of scrubs went into the garbage post-haste.

But my least fave (even worse than grape puke), would be PAPER work...like tweets, it gets in the way of my providing decent care sometimes.....it will eat me alive and it gets worse all the time....sigh.....

nursedawn67, LPN · Oct 31, 2003

I think one of the worst things is going to do an IM injection on the skinniest, most frail looking little old man/lady.....it's like where do you put the needle? Because every place looks like you are going to drill bone! :eek:

chad75 · Oct 31, 2003

I'm with you, I HATE colostomys. The aids on my floor empty the colostomy bags etc. I occasionally have to deal with one because the aid that has my patients is too busy or on break, I have been known to bribe another nurses aid to do it by buying them lunch :roll