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.

Specializes in Med-Surg, ICU.

Huge nasty blood clots. Once had a guy come into the ER with a suprapubic catheter that we had to irrigate cuz it was clogged up. When we did the hugest, nastiest clot came out. I could feel all the blood drain out of my face. I practically ran out of the room and had to lay down for awhile. That and having to empty ostomies. :barf01:

Specializes in DOU, Medical-Surgical.
There's a lot that grosses me out a little, but the one thing that follows me home and makes me feel contaminated is crusty, flaky, shedding skin. Like when you move the patients and there's a human-shaped print on the bed of skin flakes, or you take off a sock and flakes burst in to the air, or you wipe their back with a washcloth and the washcloth comes back covered in dead skin.

Smells, suction noise, make me gag momentarily but I can move on. The skin stuff makes me feel dirty for DAYS.

Not too long ago I was bathing a patient during a clinical rotation and he had mentioned that his TEDS hadn't been removed in over a week...So I'm thinking "yeah those definitely need to be removed and washed..." so I pull the first one off and BOOM! A burst of skin flakes hits my face. :barf02: I didn't know whether to nose breath or mouth breath.....so I just held my breath and tried to make it not look so obvious that I was trying so hard not to breathe!

But other than that the sound of phlegm coming up always makes me want to gag...and seeing sputum is ACK. I can handle blood, vomit and poo for the most part....still have to start working to really know what I can handle!

Specializes in ICU and most recently ER.

blown out eyeballs and displaced long bone fractures get me a little bit queasy. not bad though. in nursing school i passed out in the OR observing a open prostatectomy, not because i was grossed out, but it was the first time i'd spent that long in a mask and i guess i got a little lightheaded. how embarrassing!

Specializes in ER, ARNP, MSN, FNP-BC.

DRUNK CHUNKS !

I can take vomit, just not drunk vomit. It's always pink with white chunks............. NASTY.

close seconds: scrambled eggs in dentures, and severe eyeball injuries HATE them :)

Specializes in Emergency, Corrections, Adv Practice.

Oddly enough, it's needles in backs. i CANNOT assist with lumbar punctures. Trust me I've attempted many times and will pass out. While I was on orientation my preceptor told me I had to get over, and I didn't. I've always been able to trade another nurse "jobs" as most don't find this horrible. I watched 3 epidurals in nursing school and had to walked out of the room all 3 times before it was over seeing white with ears ringing.

Blood, guts, poop, spit.... bring it my way!

Specializes in Emergency, Critical Care Transport.

Open, oozing decubes that tunnel and literally have pus RUNNING down the opening of the wound to the bed, while the patient is screaming for 3 sandwiches and a lite orange juice. Dear god. Do you have neurons left?

Do you notice we are all vomiting from the smell of your wounds?

:eek:

Specializes in ICU,ED, Corrections, dodging med-surg.

literally laughing out loud while reading this(needed it) I will take a lower GI bleed to assisting with a vag exam while "cycling" with an std! Oh, and a smell that's never left me is a wound the the size and depth of a soccer ball with a pseudomonas infection. Lastly, gotta run with the mouth cheese too.:D

Scabies. My skin is crawling at home typing this. The smell of an infected Stage 4 Decub is a close second. Bring on the ETT/trach suctioning. Although, just yesterday some guy coughed up a lugie (sp?) which landed on my nose, thought about repaying him the favor and hurling all over him. Instead, I ran out of the room smearing alcohol gel all over my face while saying **** ****.

Specializes in Psych rn.

I must say that i' pretty good with suctioning,phlegm,mucus,wounds,open fractures,toenail fungus, and even eyeball.....

Well and I mean as pretty good as you can be.......considering there's nothing gouged about it.

I however confess, my kryptonite is vomit......

O god, just the word makes me sick, the idea of it, the sound,the appearance, the smell, it's awful consistency and warmth

I'll trade in the eyeballs for the vomiting with any of you any day.........:D

Specializes in Med/Surg, ED, ortho, urology.

I must admit I'm pretty ok with most things now. I still get watery eyes from being up close to the really bad BM smell, and sometimes vomiting will do the same, but the one thing that really bothers me are babies/toddles crying, like really crying, when they are scared, and upset, and don't know whats going on. It breaks my heart. I just want to scoop them up and snuggle them. But of course that woudn't really help and I think they wouldn't feel the same way I do about it :) Some weird scary nurse that you have never seen grabs you for a cuddle!

But I've only had to do suctioning a few times. Plus I love anything wound like. Anything that needs to be lanced and I'm in there. Anything with a discharge, you can't keep me away from.

This is why my hubby wont let me talk about my day at the dinner table!

Specializes in ER, Prehospital, Flight.

Crepitation.

I once had an elderly demented female pt that fell and suffered BILATERAL midshaft radius\ulna fxs. In her confusion she was flailing her arms around with what appeared to be additional joints to each forearm. As I was trying to calm her and get splints on her arms I could feel the bones grating together on each arm. She seemed to have no pain but was just trying to converse with me along with ALOT of arm movement. I could not believe she did not seem to have any distress\pain with these fractures she was actively moving about.

That point on...it gives me pucker to feel it. That and the various times I have had rib\sternal fxs from compressions.

Specializes in ER, ICU.

Oh, and vomiting/vomit used to bother me, and still can if it's loud and smelly enough, but not as bad as it used to.

A patient came in with sxs of CVA; was traveling with his daughter, they had stopped about an hour before at Starbucks and his daughter noticed about 30 min later that he was having some issues. They got to the hosp and he had a really bad HA. We hooked him up to the monitor and he turned to my side and started gagging. I grabbed the trash can and he starts vomiting all this pink chunky stuff. I couldn't watch and tried not to breathe b/c I knew I'd start dry-heaving too.

He finishes and I start to put the trash can back when another nurse whispers in my ear "his dentures fell in there". O.M.G. I triple-gloved myself and went fishing for these darn dentures in vomit that I can only describe as "a day at the fair". It took me 3 times looking for them b/c they were the same color as the vomit! Blech, makes me queasy just remembering it, lol.

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