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.

The only thing that really affects me is a bad upper GI bleed. It is something about the smell of the blood that turns my stomach.

Specializes in ER/Endoscopy/Blood Bank/Radiology.
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. :)

Same here. On night duty on a medical ward hearing that cough cough cough, spit it out.........makes me turn green.

As a student nurse it was our job to empty the sputum cups, and document what was in them! ACK!:barf02:

Specializes in adult critical care.

eyeballs get me. i decided i needed to get over this little foible and assisted with postmortem eye harvesting for the lions eyebank. i hit the ground! fortunately i was able to convince my charge nurse that i was ok, so she didn't send me to the EC. didn't want to end up in my own unit as a head injury.

:sstrs

Specializes in LTC.

The smell of a UTI, especially when I'm emptying a foley. This is the one thing that has made me gag on more than one occassion. The worst one was a lady with green urine. Not only did she have a foley that required emptying but she was somehow bypassing the foley (They were thinking lady partsl/urethra anastomosis). I'd leave her room darn near in tears.

The one thing I can do is trachs and suctioning. I'm one of those that finds it oddly satisfying to get down there and get all the crud up.

Specializes in ER/ICU/Flight.

eyeballs.

It's weird but I'm almost phobic about them. I've seen people with their eyes burned out by acid, popped out from various traumas, etc and didn't bother me at all...but a contact lens got superglued onto a eyeball and I could barely handle it. Also reading the operative report from a lens transplant or cataract removal, I feel a little queasy.

If I was still breathing on my own, I wouldn't be sedated enough for anything to do with my eyeballs.

Specializes in PACU, OR.

Oh yes, I know how you feel: I was assigned to eye theater as a student; ohhh, those local injections, those glaring, protuberant orbs, enucleations, eviscerations---ohhh! And what can you do but-yes-getoverit!

Even now I can never walk into eye theater without studiously looking in the opposite direction from the patient...

Many of the posters mentioned smells are their particular demons; pungent wafts don't bother me, probably because I live in an area with septic tanks. One blocked drain or routine pump-out would either send them screaming to a more civilized area or cure them forever!

Not be mean but pt. coming from nursing homes who are not well taken care of. Its quite sad to see but it grosses me out when you see their extremely dirty unkempt finger nails with fecal matter/dead skin/ etc. under it.

Another one that gets to me is fecal incontinence. The longer its been sitting there, the smellier it gets. I can picture it and literally "smell" it as i'm typing this right now. That salty pungent smell is horrific.

Specializes in Emergency Room.
Can someone explain to me what the big thing with phlegm/trach suctioning thing is? I say this as someone about to start NS, so clearly I've never done it myself, but I've volunteered in the MICU and watched trach suctioning being done and it didn't bother me in the least... in fact, I found the sound to be so incredibly satisfying. Am I weird? Or is there something else that's going to sneak up on me? Some awful smell or surprise or something? :p

Trachs/phelgm/suction don't bother me at all either. You may be surprised what will sneak up on you when least expect it. Smells have never been a problem for me....NEVER...except during pregnancy. First pregnancy...had to ask to be reassigned from the psych pod in the ER simply because the smell emanating from an indigent with massive ETOH on board sent me into a fit of retching. Second pregnancy, had a pt with a GI bleed that doubled me over the wastebasket. In fact, that incident is what prompted me to take a pregnancy test. I remember thinking UH-OH! The only time smells have ever bothered me was when I was pregnant the first time! Sure enough, I was pregnant!

The other smell that I absolutely could not tolerate while pregnant was the smell of hazelnut coffee creamer!!! Being part of a nightshift crew, there was always coffee freely flowing in the ER, but if you and I were assigned to the same pod while I was pregnant, you sure as heck better keep that hazelnut creamer away from me!

Loving this thread, BTW...

Specializes in Emergency.

I CAN'T DO THE DOOOOO! UGH, SOOOO GROSS!

Beyond that I totally agree with the oral/airway mucusy stuff. The stringy mouthy, cheesey teeth stuff? I've definitely gagged looking at some NH pt's mouth. Soooo gross.

And I can't stand halitosis. I don't mean bad breath. I'm talking do you have multiple rotting teeth in your head, how did you drive over here in a closed vehicle, have you ever brushed your teeth, don't your family members ever mention your breath, how have you ever gotten laid bad, horrible, rotten breath kind of way?

Retching right before they vomit makes the hair stand up on my neck and then I begin to gag! Also the aroma of gangrene gets me everytime

Specializes in Emergency!.

I CAN NOT stand epistaxis! Ugh, so gross! Especially when they have clots built up in their throats and they are hacking it up. I volunteered to help out in room 7 in our ED (our ENT room, without thinking) The guy had a massive bleed he'd had for a couple of hours. I stood there with a basin as he hacked up blood clots and spat blood in it and everywhere, I swear he got some on me. When I emptied it, I was very close to losing my lunch.

GI bleeds are gross too. The smell is awful, I didn't realize this as a nurse aide when a nurse asked me to empty a patients bedside commode. I did and really almost lost it. Then the nurse said "oh I thought you knew it was a GI bleed." I was like "No, I just got here, and I had NO IDEA they smelled that bad."

TRACH BREATH!!!!

Not the sputum or crusties, it's that warm, moist, humid sensation. If you suction someone, and the breath hits your forearm, it feels like it goes right thru my arm, washing doesn't help, it's a deepseated feeling.

I gown up whenever I go in to do anything w/ a pt w/ a trach!!!

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