What nursing task do you loathe???

Nurses General Nursing

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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?

I hate feeding patients too! It doesn't make me sick, I just don't have the patience for it... all I can think of is all the other things I have to do. That's probably why when I work in the hospital I only do nights

I dont mind feeding patients, but the last time I had to feed a patient it took like 45 mins and the pt insisted I cut his meat into small triangular chunks with no gristle, alternate each bite between starch>veggie>sip of tea>meat>sip of water, and insisted on forcing his very strange political views on me. All while my PCA shopped for baby clothes. Longest 30 mins of my life.

Phlegm

Teeth/nasty mouths (even just seeing a loose tooth wiggle)

Eye injuries

Nail injuries

I can handle about anything else but these make me cringe just thinking about them.

Gotta second eye injuries. It started with my older brother who has glaucoma...I watched him go through plenty of eye surgeries when we were young kids so my phobia started there. Eye patches freak me out till this day.

I'm in trauma so I see a lot of windshield glass v. eyeball. They typically put some xeroform over it until opthamology can make a decision on whether or not to save the eye, and the thought of what's lurking beneath that strip of xeroform makes my soul shudder.

When I did a clinical rotation in CVICU, we had a lot of periorbital edema to the point that the eyes wouldn't shut and all you could do is put a moist gauze over it. Some nurses would tape them shut. Freaked me all the way out.

Feeding patients.

It takes everything in me not to vomit directly in their mouth.

Especially hospital eggs.... Seeing the Smushed bits in the thick string of spit when I pull the spoon back does me in....

So far that is the only the I absolutely hate doing, it makes me ill.

Your description is TRIGGERING!!!!

Specializes in Vascular Access.
I agree with many of the ones already posted so I'll add one I haven't seen yet.

I hate changing the opsite dressing over the central line of a hospice patient. I hate it because the RULES or P&P states you can't place gauze over the tubing to keep the opsite from sticking so when you change a dressing, you have to use adhesive remover and slowly, slowly peel that opsite off the tubing to the site. That drives me crazy because I'm so afraid I'll jostle the Huber needle out.

Infection control my orifice. . . . . .:rolleyes:

Question: Why are you changing the dressing on an accessed implanted port? Is it soiled or non-occlusive? Or, do you have a policy in place which changes TSM's greater than every 7 day intervals, as the non-coring needle can stay in place for seven days? Because the risk of dislodgement is there, you're right about how tedious this task is, so ideally change the dressing when you reaccess the port, but you must be speaking to the prn times.

Specializes in pediatric neurology and neurosurgery.

Trach care, always, but especially if the patient has pseudomonas! The smell, the slime, ugh! :dead:

I forgot to mention how much I dislike getting patient into at TLSO clamshell brace. You try to sandwich your patient between molded fronts and backs and then velcro/squish them in. They never seem to fit properly. Even worse is an order for upright xrays in the brace. Now you got to take them to xray too.

Tube feeds.

Urine.

It just gets up my nose. And I think it's evaporating so it's some kind of sick urine steam. UGH.

And I've started to despise talking to families. In the last week, I've been yelled at 4 times. So naturally, this week, it's not a task I like at all.

Was pseudomonas what I could smell? OMG it was bad. Thank god we managed to discharge that one!

Doing diabetic teaching on a 350 pound frequent flyer while she washes down a stack of pancakes and syrup with orange juice. Just drag me away in a straightjacket please.

Specializes in Heme Onc.

The utterly ridiculous, ludicrous: Sequential Compression Device documentation. Newsflash TJC. Nobodys clotting on my floor... no one has any platelets, 90% of the people are ambulatory. Every 6 hours when the task fires for me to document about the SCD's that NO ONE is wearing, a piece of me dies. When I say a piece, I mean my brainstem.

Cleaning liquid poo...on someone with groin nec fasc. Bonus if there's a big ol' pannus in the way...wait, that's just about all groin nec fasc pts. I had one fairly recently where she'd lost most of her external genetalia, extended up into the abdomen and within an inch of her rectum. She had a rectal tube but it failed--she was a very big woman and her weight compressed the tube. Stool got up into her open lower belly and into her lady parts.

My out-loud words were "what do I do, and where the heck do I start??!?"

Yea, rectal tubes. Ugh. And of course you are in an isolation room so you are alone and wearing a mask, and cannot breathe...

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