What is your Nursing Kryptonite?

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.

Haha I love this! Can I just go ahead and fill this out with my list? LOL!

1. Trachs, definitely trachs. I cannot handle sputum and this is why I'm not an RT.

Which also kind of brings me to another point- you have a trach or are intubated? Just stop trying to talk and mouth words because I can't understand trachonese or entrachonese lol!

2. Patients who have tubed that are vented and honk every 30 seconds even with being heavily sedated or on pain drips. JESUS. CHRIST. I can hear it in my sleep.

3.Hovery and rude families that want to bug you at the worst possible times. Oh I'm sorry, let me go ahead and leave my agitated patient alone who is trying to get out of bed and pull out his ET tube because you have come out of your parent's room for the second time because they want a third orange sherbet. I'll get right on that.

4. Patients that have a lot of family members. Please people, my patient literally just arrive 5 minutes ago and there is 10 of you in the waiting room. This is an ICU, not a coffee shop to socialize!!

5. Patients who are not tubed, sedated, and restrained... Most days ha!

6. Demented patients who try to get out of bed every 5 minutes and moan/repeat the same things over and over again. After awhile, it gets a bit annoying.

7. Patients who are whiny no matter what you do/use the call light every 5 minutes/negative nellies.

8. OB/GYN/Peds patients. Nopenopenopenope.

9. People who say that they are "family members" to the patient but aren't. Please, get out of the room and stop asking 21 questions.

10. People who say they are a "nurse" or in the "medical field" and want information on the patient then have no idea what the heck you're talking about... Just stop.

Hmm... Maybe I should switch professions (HAH! Just kidding, I love being a nurse :) )

EVERYTHING on this list except sputum/trachs. Sputum, puke, poop, whatever bodily fluid-none of that stuff bothers me. It's more the family and friends who drive me nuts. Also the patients who are vented and not sedated-that's why I don't work neuro!

Specializes in Pediatric Oncology, Pediatric Neurology.

Suctioning trach secretions post-chemo treatments. The chemical smell literally sets up shop in my nostrils for DAYS after and I swear it also sticks to my hair [emoji37]

Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.

Pressure ulcers. Particularly those within range of getting poop in them.

Specializes in Med Surg, ICU, Infection, Home Health, and LTC.
It can be silly or serious. Just what task or patient type is it that really pushes your buttons irrationally?

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 acknowledge these areas of weakness inside you, vent your frustrations and be prepared for them the best you can, 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?

You did have a great many things you've pushed down deep inside. That is never good for our own well being, mental or physical. Nurses are not superhuman and therefor we fell left out on a limb not knowing how to cope with what we see. There is very little teaching ever done to help the nurses keep herself grounded and well balanced. Burnout has ebbs and flows, high tides and low tides. They need to teach us how to ride those waves effectively.

We must make the time to take care of ourselves as nurses, no one else knows what to do that is for sure. And I think we are often our own worst enemy accepting the myth that we can handle anything. We need each other. Without masks or knives hidden behind our backs to "get them" the next time we follow them in a patient area,

My pet peeve is hemodialysising patients that clearly don't want to even be half way compliant and all admits are for sepsis and they are in need of stat dialysis. it tears me up watching them play russian roulette with their life.

The smell of C diff. makes me wanna for the hills. I'm OK with ostomies and trachs, but skin snow and pressure ulcers...yikes. I just smile through it and get it done.

Dirty, scaly, crusty feet, with those yellow toenails wrapped over the ends. You know the ones. You try so carefully to remove the stiff, gray socks and the snow storm of dry skin explodes in your face. The spaces between the toes are filled with petrified globs of of dead skin, probably cemented together with urine. And the smell!

I think I just threw up in my mouth, a little bit.

This definitely!!!

Also open abdominal fistulas on a patient that just can't seem to grasp that NPO means absolutely nothing by mouth. No matter what we would do, her husband kept brining her 2 liter Sprites/Mt. Dews and Mexican food. Blech! The acid smell is just too much to take!!! [emoji107]🏻[emoji40]

Specializes in LTC.

Feet, anything to do with feet. Also respiratory secretions, I am one of the many who hates suctioning. I couldn't even use those bulb syringes to suction the snot out of my babies noses when they had colds without gagging. Blech.

LICE:no:.....I just can't it is almost like a phobia. When I worked medical I would offer to clean up incontinent CDIFF all night over dealing with a patient with lice. I'm so scared of taking it home to my kids one of whom has think curly hair and is 5 and doesn't like her combed anyways. We have 2 right now I begged for someone to take her. I bought lice repellant spray and tea tree oil. Im not kidding, PHOBIA

:wideyed: Lice can't jump! (Go hang out with the school nurses for awhile). ;)

I know that logically lol plus I work psych now the patients wander about the unit. Im afraid of an out break caused by a critter in the chair of the tv room lol. I know its unlikely but outbreaks have occured in such units before. SUPER LICE that's the thing of nightmares lol

Bossy, demanding, like the homecare patient who asked me to transfer laundry, relocate items in her house, make her tea, take out her garbage. I don't mind making tea but she is capable of making it herself and I will take her garbage out but it's always at the end of my visit, when I am leaving. This is a person I dread asking, " is there anything else I can do for you?"

Specializes in Psychiatric.

Borderline personality disorder.

Eating stool bothers you? Hmm. I would think that would bother all of us!

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