What is your Nursing Kryptonite?

Nurses General Nursing Nursing Q/A

Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

You know, your weakness ... your one "thing" that makes your stomach flip over when you see a patient with it/them/whatever. I had my first "maggot" patient recently (maggots living where they shouldn't be, you understand), and it really grossed many of my coworkers out. I was relieved to find that the maggots didn't bother me ... apparently my only Achilles heel thus far is nasty dentures, LOL -- EWWWWW.

When I was a tech, I had a nurse offer me $5 to suction a patient because sputum makes her queasy.

292 Answers

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Teeth things - oooh ick!!!

Because I'm an APN, I get the non-emergent complaints so I do a lot of teeth pain issues.....oooohhhh ick!!!!

I worked with a nurse once that couldn't do epistaxis - sent her over the edge. We would trade: one dental pain for one epistaxis....lol

Specializes in home health, dialysis, others.

Hahahaha!!!! At this point I have gotten over just about everything. But as a student - - peeled back a pt's gown, he had vomited on himself, and when the smell hit me, I turned and vomited into his wastebasket. In my evaluation for my clinical, the instructor suggested that maybe nursing wasn't for me!!!

Also as a student - watched someone trying to start an IV on an elderly woman. About the 4th or 5th stick, I broke into a sweat, and the aide grabbed me and got me out of the room! I was later an IV therapist, and can still stick with the best of them. Although I've taught many people how to start them, I have to force myself to watch!!!

When I was pregnant with my first son - now 25 - I worked in acute dialysis. Every time a pt threw up, I did too! Sometimes barely getting away from the bedside!!

Specializes in Pedi Rehab,Pediatrics, PICU.

I can handle a lot of things, but mucus and the sound of someone blowing their snotty nose makes me cringe and want to gag/hurl. No probs holding the bucket while you vomit though. :)

Specializes in Emergency, Mental Health.

I can handle most any task handed to me as long as it doesn't involve dentures. I suspect this is because I had a couple different family members that would chase me around with their dentures when I was little and would use them to terrify me. To this day I just can't. I can digitally remove stool from a patient or handle their sputum and not bat an eye but if they need me to handle their dentures I have to put on the biggest of my big girl nurse panties and really put my mind in a special place to do it.

As far as patient types go, I used to think my weakness was OBGYN and pediatrics-- but I quickly came to realize that it was just a matter of educating myself and I found myself not nervous while caring for these populations.

But no matter how much educating myself I do, I seem to have emotional bias against obese patients and their families when they remain non-compliant and refuse to take any ownership in the position they have found themselves in. To paint a picture of the scenario I'm talking about; When you have a 40 something year old very obese patient and family who get extremely angry with the healthcare team when we aren't able to undo 40+ years of abuse done to their body with one procedure or hospital visit. When they buck and refuse nearly all of the interventions we offer (a heart healthy diet and the family sneaks in 2 fast food meals every day, non-smoking policies and the patient sneaks off the floor coming back reeking of smoke) and then get angry when they aren't in much better shape on discharge than admission. I KNOW I have this bias against this type of scenario and it takes conscious effort to ensure that I give just as good of care to them as any other patient. These patients make me irrationally angry and get under my skin like no other. I seem to take it personally when things don't go well. Again, I think much of this comes back to my own personal fears regarding my own parents being very unhealthy people and their unwillingness to acknowledge their contribution to their health problems.

There are all kinds of patient scenarios that annoy me (asthmatic kids coming in several times a month with parent's 'unable to afford' their RX but perfectly able to afford the cigs they chain smoke in the closed car with their kids inside) but I don't really think those are as irrational. I think MOST people would be annoyed by them. I want to know what scenarios get under your skin in a "disproportionate to stressor" type of way.

The best thing you can do, in my opinion, is to self-acknowledge these areas and be prepared for them and make sure at the end of the day you can say that regardless of your emotions, you treated the situation as you would have treated any other situation. How do you deal with these weaknesses?

Specializes in Med/Surg.

Yeast infections on the skin.....you know...in fat folds. *GAG*

Specializes in LTC.

Toenails. BRRRRRRRRR. Or any toenail fungus/diseases. brrr.

Also the smell from the g-tube. *gag*

Specializes in Med/Surg.

I am sad to day I have a couple. 1. crusty dentures 2. patients actually eating stool 3. fake eyes.

Specializes in Emergency.

I'm with Razi, the one thing that makes me gag is "fromunda cheese". Yarlp.

Specializes in OB.

I'm not so bad with smells. However I cant stand certain sounds.

The sound of someone suctioning a trach.

The sound of bone being pulled apart during open heart surgery.

The sound of an episiotomy will make me hit the roof. I nearly fainted when I heard my first one.

Specializes in Hospice, LTC, Rehab, Home Health.

I can clean up emesis after the fact but can't be in the room during. and fake eyeballs I'll trade you a month worth of trach suction for 1 fake eyeball! lol

Specializes in Adult ICU (All over), NICU, Education.

BONES!

bones that stick out of the skin, broken bones that crunch together when you touch them, joints out of alignments, I paid someone $5 to take an IO out of one of my patients. I am thinking of getting some therapy!

Specializes in Med/Surg, LTAC, Critical Care.

Sputum.... I'm better now, but when I first started, even just HEARING the gurgling a someone being suctioned brought me to my knees.

The ONLY time (so far) I have ever vomited in a patient's room (or at work period for that matter) happened when I was suctioning and doing oral care on a little old nursing home lady. It looked like she hadn't been suctioned in months (we have over a dozen nursing homes in the area, unfortunately only 1 is any good). Anyway, I had just a few minutes prior drank my pre-med pass snack of chocolate milk... When I was finishing suctioning I got a huge chunk of indescribable gunk (half dried, about the size of a 2x2 )stuck to the tip of the yankeur... I quickly handed off the yankeur to my tech (threw it actually) and emptied the contents of my stomach into the trash can.

Fortunately the patient had no idea what was going on. I would have felt bad.

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