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.

We've also had a few patients that we tell that an admission bath is something we do all the time. Urine crusted longjohns and overalls, socks, boots! BO! I've had to cut out matted glops of hair. I don't even want to know what was in that. At lewast nothing was crawling out of it.

We did have a fellow who brought his own maggots in once. In his leg ulcers. He didn't really plan to have maggots in his leg ulcers, it was just those several days of sitting home alone and not swatting flies.

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Specializes in Geriatrics, Wound Care.
Especially from a trach!!!

I second that! Working as a CNA, I walked by a room with a trach patient that was in desperate need of suctioning...I told his nurse while running as fast and far as possible...I cannot stand the sound of suctioning either!

Jennee

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I Can't Stand Any Respiratory Secretions!!!!!!!!!gross

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Specializes in Physicians office, PICU.

I can handle alot...and I mean alot but the one thing that buckles my knees is the pulling off fingernail or toenails. Holy crap that will put me to the floor!

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Specializes in PICU, Nurse Educator, Clinical Research.

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

EW. Yeah....I'm skeeved by most feet....my best friend wants to go to a yoga class together, but I only do yoga at home- I can't deal with being in a room near all those strange, icky feet!

we had a guy come in who'd had some sort of dermatitis on his feet....which had eventually progressed to osteomyelitis. nasty, horrible, dirty, deformed and rancid feet, complete with wounds open to the bone!

that being said, people who shoot mucus out of their trachs when they cough...i just can't cope. and when it's green/brown and sticky enough to (a) get hung on the trach on the way out, or (b) shoot across the room like a projectile weapon. i have to leave the room. posthaste.

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The thick, smelly, (sputum like) oral secretions that head injury patients all seem to produce. The sound of suctioning them out is just as bad. Working in trauma the an RT friend knew that that would get me out of the room instantly if he started to suction out the patients mouth.

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Specializes in NICU.

BTW: Squick is a great word! Can I use that for scrabble? :chuckle

Isn't it a goodie? I don't know if it's in the OED, though, which I believe is the authority for Scrabble words...

Feel free to use it in any and all appropriate contexts.

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I'm getting good at this. Few months back I'd have been shuddering reading these replies. But now, here I am ... drinking my coffee and actually cracking a smile at most of these replies. Yeah! I've come a long way baby :chuckle

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Specializes in Orthosurgery, Rehab, Homecare.

I'm with Goddess66 on the epidural- I passed out in clinical watching one! It's funny now.

The other thing is the smell of infected necrotic tissue-nothing is worse for me.(Can pack a tunneling wound up to my elbow -and have- but if it smells like the long forgotten meatloaf in the back of the fridge . . .) Stinky respiratory secretions on a trach rank right up there. Give me GI bleed poo over these any day.

~Jen

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:barf02:

spuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

yuck.

I have to agree with this one.......you can poop on me, pee on me, vomit on me, and I can deal with necrotic tissue (first experience was with a gangrenous foot that went to the hip and the family refused amputation, the smell of rotting flesh is bad enough without SEEING it), but please, please don't hock a big ol' loogey my way......I WILL VOMIT!!!! If I hafta deep suction, I do it with a trash can handy, cuz I'm GONNA vomit!!!

Just the thought makes me wanna :barf02: !!!!!!! ewwwww

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Things that make me feel gaggy:

The sight of an old yaunkers (sp?) suction hissing away next to someone for DAYS with yellow crap all over it and then the nurse sticking it back into suction their mouth again. Makes me want to hurl. The mucus itself or trach don't bother me much, but those crusty old suction wands...hurl.

Emptying those big sloshy suction containers full of bile or GI bleeds or whatever it is people have in their stomach. Always terrified I will TRIP and it will go flying or worse splash on me.

I emptied the biliary drains of someone with liver cancer, one side was ok, it was just this yellow brown syrupy stuff. The other side was infected and was this horrific smelling brown crap that stank SO BAD. That was nasty.

Fecal emesis is pretty bad. Putting NG tubes down people whose eyes are watering and they are gagging - that makes me feel gaggy in sympathy.

Seeing/cleaning vomit isn't too bad, but hearing that repeated gagging gets to me after awhile. Wounds don't bother me, I find them fascinating. Earwax doesn't bother me at all.

Oh I'm so glad I work in OB. The occasional vomiting mom, some poop, lots of pee, baby meconium, and lots of blood - that's about all I see.

Tigerlily

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Specializes in ORTHOPAEDICS-CERTIFIED SINCE 89.

Eyeball goop and festering toenails......gaaaaak. In fact ANYthing eyeball and nail gags me.

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