What squicks you out?

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According to CSI: every criminalist has a fluid that especially grosses them out. From my admittedly non-scientific polling, it's the same with nurses. So what's yours? What's the one thing you'd take another nurse's entire assignment to avoid?

Going by my reaction to our lectures today, I think mine's necrotic tissue in a pressure ulcer. :barf02: Thank god I'm going into an NNP program! Give me poop, blood, vomit, ANYTHING before a festering wound.

I didn't think anything could make me pass out until:

A lady had a breast bx. She had bled under the stitches and made a little pouch of old blood. The doctor nipped a stitch and pressed on the breast to evacuate it. When the blood came out it looked like a mass of black worms wriggling out of a hole in her breast. I made what I hoped was some polite noise and promptly left the room.

But hands down, the worst smell is MELANA. There is NO worse smell. None. I defy you to think of any.

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The only thing that grosses me out anymore is yellow fat or the lacy apron fat.:uhoh3: :uhoh21:

I did not realise how jaded I had become until we had a motorcyclist who had swerved in front of a truck and lost. He was disemboweled by the handle bars. After we transported him we got back to the station dinner was on the table. One of the fire guys stabbed a large piece of Italian sausage and was

showing the other crew to the way that we had to lift his entrails back into the guy's body. Next thing we heard was a wretching noise and a thud. One of the police officers that was eating with us vomitted the other passed out when Jason bit into the sausage.

Amazingly the motorcyclist lived.

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Specializes in Critical Care, ER.

Vomit makes me nauseous... I know that's not too original but hey I can't help it.

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i am not a nurse but vomit and poop i can not stand

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Specializes in ER/PDN.

Vomit, GI Bleeders, sputum and all of the actions that make these things produce. :barf01: And drunks. Can't stand the smell of alcohol especially mixed with blood or Taco Bell!!

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People using undated NS to irrigate anything. If it's not dated, throw it out and get another....

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Specializes in ICU, CCU, Trauma, neuro, Geriatrics.

I get nauseated with patients that dig out their poo and put it in their mouths. I just cannot be in that room when it is obvious.

Please kill me before I get that bad.

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GI bleed poop has got to be one of the most horrendous smells.

BLECH :bugeyes:

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pasty poop!

and smelly vomit!

Annor

According to CSI: every criminalist has a fluid that especially grosses them out. From my admittedly non-scientific polling, it's the same with nurses. So what's yours? What's the one thing you'd take another nurse's entire assignment to avoid?

Going by my reaction to our lectures today, I think mine's necrotic tissue in a pressure ulcer. :barf02: Thank god I'm going into an NNP program! Give me poop, blood, vomit, ANYTHING before a festering wound.

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According to CSI: every criminalist has a fluid that especially grosses them out. From my admittedly non-scientific polling, it's the same with nurses. So what's yours? What's the one thing you'd take another nurse's entire assignment to avoid?

Obviously I don't especially love any fluids, but respiratory secretions and vomit are the ones that really make me gag. Give me poop over puke any day.

Edit: Come to think of it, NG suction contents are pretty nasty. And I haven't had the honor of smelling GI bleed poop yet. Eeesh.

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#1 - Diarrhea - the kind that looks like someone put it in the blender and pureed away, then dumped it on your patients lap

#2 - Melena - smells like skunk roadkill that been there for a few days (not that I go out and smell road kill on a regular basis)

#3 - Oral fungal infections - nothing worse than someone having black crusties on their tongue

#4 - Feet - I hate feet! Nasty callously, deformed feet ICK! I can't touch 'em

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Specializes in Adult SICU; open heart recovery.
I'm pretty easy going, usually things that get me get most people; GI bleed poo, that sort of thing.

I do work with a nurse who has a particular "squick out". I work NICU and as some may know, sometimes babies are born with extra digits, the ones without bony joint connection to the hand are simply tied off and eventually they fall off. Until they do they hang there on the side of the hand (usually) purple and dangling. This one nurse who is very good and very compassionate cannot take those at all. She calls them "grapes" and always shudders when they touch her. She says they just freak her out and she's always afraid they are about to fall off (which is the objective).

Ewww. Reminds me of a pt. I had with half a dead hand from a brachial A-line gone bad. Four fingers and half her hand were black, dried up, and curled inward. We had to apply Silvadene ointment to it BID. Slathering that ointment on what looked like belonged on a long-dead body totally creeped me out. We all wished they'd just remove it surgically. I guess we were waiting for it to fall off -- can you imagine being the lucky one to unwrap the hand one day and oops, off falls half of it? The pt. died from an unrelated condition before that could happen -- fortunately for us, I guess.

I don't have a hard time looking at a bad sacral decub, but packing it and hitting bone totally grosses me out. I also get grossed out by thick green snot (for lack of a better word), especially in little kids when it drips down practically into their mouths (ewww. too much detail there!)

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