What nursing task do you loathe???

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Just realized today that I can't stand ostomy appliances. It's not the poop, it's just cutting and sizing the appliance and that messy paste. Tedious and irritating but somebody's gotta do it.

How about you?

See now, I can place a bedpan with the best of them...it's the taking it out that I have trouble with. Inevitably there is urine (and most often something else floating around) and when I go to take it out from under them, it's super glued to one butt cheek.

Splash splash.

Jo's having a bad day.

Uh, yes! I had a woman who had just delivered using the bed pan and when I went to get the thing out, I came so close to being splashed with bloody urine that I yelped! I always have trouble with that. God forbid, one day it's going to happen. I'm going to start wearing mask and goggles when I take them off. LOL!

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Specializes in ED.

Accessing ports. I haaaate it and will pawn that task off ASAP if possible. I've no idea why, I guess because I am so used to peripheral IV access that it's foreign to me. I will actually try to do a peripheral stick on a pt with a port before I try to access the port. I would take a fecal disinpaction before I would a port, and that is saying A LOT.

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Specializes in Progressive Care.

Responding to family members' questions 10 mins after change of shift when I hardly know anything about the patient and haven't even done my assessment. And of course most of the questions are not even within my scope of practice to answer.

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Charting with a 20 year old computer system and not having any organization in the hospital for finding resources.

Also - feet are so gross.

Trying to teach patients that I know will be noncompliant the minute they leave the hospital.

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Surgical baths x2 on those frail little old people, with a broken hip/femur. It just seems like torture!

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Specializes in Critical care and home health.

Oral care and suctioning!!!!

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Specializes in ortho, hospice volunteer, psych,.

Scrubbing, scraping, chiseling, prying, dentures until the **** things come clean.

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Specializes in ICU, ED.
When I worked nights I always hated travelling for HCTs. It would put me SO far behind to get packed up, getting the CT itself, and then making the pt presentable. All those lines and wires get SO tangled, esp. if the pt has an EVD, an art line, and CVP setup. Because then you have not only lines but the pressure bags/EVD canister etc. (Scheduled HCTs are done around 0500.)

YES!! I hate having to travel with my patient. Even if it's a quick and easy CT head (takes less than 20 min to get there and back). Don't even get me started on MRI and IR. Having to leave the unit to get anything besides food/coffee makes me want to die.

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Specializes in Hospice.
I swear the following is true.

After one particularly difficult disimpaction the patient shuddered and proclaimed, "I feel so giddy!" I was thinking they do not pay me enough for that kind of service..

This reminded me of my Hospice patient who played around with her pain meds, ignored her bowel program and flat out lied to me regarding the amount of BM she was having. She also refused to let me do rectal exams.

Got a call from the office on a Monday morning to see her for severe constipation. Really. I get there, she's in agony. She's so impacted her orifice is dilated and stool is protruding.

I give her some Roxanol, get gloves and Surgilube, and start digging for gold. After I dug out this huge, hellish amount of rock hard stool, she said, "Two things: One, I will never lie to you again. Two, I refuse to believe that gay men actually like having stuff put there!"

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.
This reminded me of my Hospice patient who played around with her pain meds, ignored her bowel program and flat out lied to me regarding the amount of BM she was having. She also refused to let me do rectal exams.

Got a call from the office on a Monday morning to see her for severe constipation. Really. I get there, she's in agony. She's so impacted her orifice is dilated and stool is protruding.

I give her some Roxanol, get gloves and Surgilube, and start digging for gold. After I dug out this huge, hellish amount of rock hard stool, she said, "Two things: One, I will never lie to you again. Two, I refuse to believe that gay men actually like having stuff put there!"

Forgive my naivety, I didn't realize hospice pts had regular rectal exams. Is it because of the large amount of pain meds they're on?

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Forgive my naivety, I didn't realize hospice pts had regular rectal exams. Is it because of the large amount of pain meds they're on?

Bowel protocol is huge due to the pain medication. And yes, if someone hasn't had a BM in a certain amount of days and your protocol isn't working (stool softeners, laxatives, suppositories, Mg. Citrate, MOM, etc.) then an enema is advised which entails a rectal exam first.

I do have patients who refuse enemas and rectal exams. One out of shyness and I gave him suppositories to place himself as he is able to do so and it worked. Other people can't do it themselves. It is a challenge to keep a person's bowels healthy and moving. :up:

Edited to add - I just remembered a recent patient who'd become used to having a BM only by enema. She'd done it for years. She refused to allow the nurses to give her an enema and could handle doing it herself until the last few days of life.

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Thanks for this post! As a nursing student it's comforting to know that it's normal for the "icky" stuff to bother me...as long as the patient doesn't know!

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