OK c'mon fess up everyone. There is ONE absolute most worst nursing proceedure that everyone can't stand to do, but you have to when the time arises...what turns your stomach and ties it in a knot for hours after and makes you dred doing it it hours before?????
For me, it's trach care! Uuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhhhh!
I dred doing it. I love when I come on duty and the traches are all nice and clean, but it seems they never stay that way for long. After awhile they become all gooey and bubbly and crusty and then I have to come along and clean this stuff. My God! It's times like this I wonder why I couldn't wait to be a nurse! I mean what was I thinking??? And it's times like this I'd rather be cleaning my cats litter box! The most disgusting part of it all is when I'm almost finished and Joe patient gives a good cough and out flies a loogie and lands on the freshly made bed linen...I can't stand it!!!Why people find this stuff fasinating I'll NEVER know. I'd rather be doing a code brown in all honesty.
So what makes you want to launch your lunch? Don't be shy, tell us why!
I worked GI for 7 years - A man brough me something he found in his stool (all white and slimey) wrapped in aluminum foil! I assured him that the doctor would want to see that and to save it for when he came in!
How about those pts who do physchological torture on you? You know, the alert pt who is on the light constantly. pressing it as you exit the room.....asking you to move their Kleenex box 2 cm to the left....these are stable, alert, able pts, asking me to wash their hands and face (sudden onset of myasthenia gravis or what?).....irks me.
Or the 490lb pt who had multiple decubs in the folds, who needed a new Foley (it took 5 of us), chronic diarrhea AND did the constant call light thing.......yuck
:chair: Oh dear. Grapes to raisins to grapes. Yikes!!! I now have heard everything.
They used to in the old days--use coke in a bottle to douche with after doing the big one. They would shake it up, insert and the foam was used to douche with. Then dollars to donuts there would be a vacuum created and they would then show up in the ER. They used to keep a drill in the ER to drill a hole in the bottom of the bottle to break the vacuum. True story!!!
I remember many years ago working as a nurses aide in an ICU and the one nurse was suctioning a trach while the other nurse stood at the side of the bed. The patient coughed, the nurse didn't duck fast enough, and the vision that is forever engrained in my mind is that nurse standing in shock as a gross/slimey wet sputum wad slowly slid down the lens of her glasses. It still makes me shiver.
Specializes in med/surg, cardiac/telemetry, hospice.
I would have to say it was the 480lb woman with multiple skin folds and a decub under each one. (Did I mention each decub was tunneling and oozing green goopy pus?) The smell was enough to knock us over. On top of that she had open wounds to the lower extremities, complete with their own yellow crusty drainage. It took three of us to dress her wounds: two to hold the extremity/skin fold, and the other to do the dressings. We each came equipped with a mask, not only for the possibility of flying pus, but just to cover *some* of the smell.
uhhhh........what's a trach care? ok, all these stories are drawing me back...no, don't think about, STOP, stop thinking about. DO NOT, i say DO NOT freak out...it's my future job....i'm not thinking about it, yes....rotten feet, feces, puke....IT"S OKAY!! stop it!! ok, i'm lina, if ya dont know. click NurseLiNA to find out more about me. obviously i am not anywhere in the nursing field now. excluding all the lil "nasties," do ya still LUV ur jobs??
:eek: Rotten grapes. What were those doing up there or need I ask. What was the explanation for that!!!:imbar 
Darlene K.
341 Posts
I worked GI for 7 years - A man brough me something he found in his stool (all white and slimey) wrapped in aluminum foil! I assured him that the doctor would want to see that and to save it for when he came in!