What is your weakness?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Hi everyone,

I am relatively new here. I spent the last year reading allnurses.com and recently registered and would like to know what is your weakness regarding medical care.

Everyone, at least that I know, has a weakness. Something that just makes them queasy. Some people say they can't handle sputum of any kind and others seem to get weak in the knees when they see broken bones. (I knew a ER nurse who admitted to this)

I tend to get a little woozy when someone palpates my inner arm to look for a vein. It even happens if I think about it too much. It is not the needle. I had them in my hand and does not do a thing to me. I can deal with anything else. Granted I am still a student so I have not experienced everything.

So, what does it for you? Inquiring minds want to know.

Vitamins. I just hate the smell of vitamins. There are even some pharmacies I can go into because of that smell. I know it's crazy.....

Specializes in LTC and MED-SURG.

Oral Care. Very naive of me, but I didn't think about that while training to be a nurse. I never wanted to do anything having to do with dentistry because I don't look looking into or touching people's mouth.

& Nasal Mucous

morning breath and BO:saint:

Specializes in ER, telemetry.

Really smelly feet. Renal failure urine. Lower GI bleed.

I don't like stage 4 pressure sores either. Took care of woman eaten up with cancer that had a stage 4 ulcer to her sacrum and buttocks to the point she had no rectum anymore. And the smell was HORRIBLE.

Had a (psych) pt bring duffel bag into ER with road kill in it. That was a GOD-AWFUL smell that I NEVER want to smell again.

:sofahider I can't stand vomit. Even the sound is sickening to me.

Also trach leakage, when it is spilling out. It looks like throwing up out the neck.

Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

GI bleed poop. Definitely bad.

Trach sputum. Also bad.

Ear wax. Blech.

I work postpartum & nursery. I can handle lots of blood, poo, vomit, pee, or pus, but do not ask me to suction a trach. Fortunately, there aren't many trachs in postpartum.

Specializes in ICU.

Dentures are the worst for me. I don't know what it is but I cannot stand dentures. I had a patient eating cheese and crackers once who then took her dentures out and wanted me to rinse them for her. Of course they were caked with cracker mush so it took a good amount of rinsing and brushing to get them clean. I was dry-heaving the whole time!

Dead, flaky skin is another. I had a patient once whose wife said he had always had incredibly dry skin no matter what they tried. While giving him his bedbath and scrubbing, the skin flakes kept flying. The tech and I had to shake ourselves off when we were done because we had gotten covered in flakes. :eek:

After the first bath, we all gowned from then on when bathing him! We slathered him up with lotion a few times a day but nothing seemed to stop all of the flakes, they said he had always been like that. I've cleaned up vomit, feces and all kinds of yummy things but that skin was one of the worst things ever!

Specializes in floor to ICU.

I thought I was gonna pass out when on of the podiatrist's removed my patient's big toenail. The slicing, tugging, pulling, twisting...(gulp) I feel dizzy just thinking about it.

Specializes in cardiology, LTC.

I can take poop and sputum. The sound of someone vomiting gets me. Just had a GI bleed patient the other day. The smell is horrible but I can take that too. What gets me is giving an IM injection! I guess it came from having to give IMs to so many elderly patients when I worked in LTC. I was always afraid I would hit bone. :uhoh21: It still gives me the willies to give one!!!

Specializes in Infection Preventionist/ Occ Health.

Sputum. Most of the time I just avoid looking at the specimen if at all possible.

Plating out sputum specimens during my Medical Technologist clinicals was the hardest thing I had to do.

The smell of C. Diff. also gets to me. We don't have a hood in our lab, so when I have to do an occult blood on a C. Diff. specimen, I hold my breath while I put the stool on the test card. Then I walk to the other side of the room for five minutes to let the smell dissipate. I made the mistake once of breathing in right as I opened a specimen, and I almost got sick!

Specializes in ER.

I can do it, but I get really creeped out about the feeling of crepitus with broken ribs during compressions. The effect for me is kind of like fingernails on a chalkboard. When someone is very fragile and everything just crunches with that first compression and you can feel it grating with each subsequent one. Ewww creepy

Specializes in Brain injury,vent,peds ,geriatrics,home.

Ya know what really creeps me out??Kidney dialysis!!Just the thought of someones blood coming out of thier bodies into a machine just freaks me out!!I mean what if a tube breaks/or the tubing isnt sterile.?I think its so disgusting!!VOmit,mucus,BMs wounds dont bother me.Or horrible odors(except necrosed tissue)

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