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!
When I worked LTC there was a lady who wouldn't let us clean her dentures. She kept them in for 15 days and when we finally coaxed them out, they were green and moldy....God, thinking about it now makes me gag yet....
But, I vote for all of the above. Trach care....eesh....don't mind GI bleeds though....
Trach suctioning (without ballard setup on a vent) is the worst to me, although GI bleed poop and ostomies are close to the top of the list.
But to me, the grossest smell EVER, is stale, sitting-in-the-urinal-for-eight-hours-at-the-bedside pee. Just about makes me vomit. It's the only thing I can't stifle the gag reflex over.
How about the 400-500 lb hygenically challenged that insist you clean them up and won't lift a fold. And you aren't sure what it is growing there. Besides the old stale urine-amonia!!! Put on a mask and suck on a strong cough drop and it still lingers in your nostrils!!!
Isn't nursing fun???????? I think if I heard these stories when I was 5 y/o and started to fantasize about being a nurse, I probably would have changed my mind on the spot! These are great stories...Keep on posting everybody!
The worst thing I have seen and nothing comes close since. Had a burn patient that was septic with pseudomonas and klebsiella,
post op about 3 days, debrided down to muscle tissue on 90% of body surface. Full body dressing changes q12, pull the dressings loose and hold this guy's leg up in the middle of the shin, and watch the pus pour off like squeezing out a rag. I could actually "comb" his body and scoop up a double handfull of pus lodged in the muscle tissue. The guy was still lightly sedated and not fighting the respirator, and responded to verbal stimuli and commands. He was the closest thing I have ever seen to the full muscular anatomy, looked like an open textbook, except for all the green and yellow.
really bad odors are the abosolute worse. Particularly those resulting from hygene issues or really really bad infections.
I don''t like ostomy care only because it never seems to fail that they ooze just as you cleaned them and are about to reapply the apliance and you have all this stool in your way and have to keep cleaning and it keeps getting in the way of attaching the apliance.
I can deal with trach care and even mouth and denture care. In fact I have a thing about denture care and mouth care. I will clean them and be especially diligent so as not to let them get foul and disgusting. I especially clean when someone else has let this happen or soaked dirty unbrushed dentures.
It is kind of like my fetish of cleaning toilets.
Oh, I can't stand to see someone take their dentures our and lick them. Yetch.
DISIMPACTIONS,TRACHCARE, GIBLEEDER AND THE BEDPAN. those are the worst to me. but the 500 lbs preg women who has not washed or bathed in a while much less washed down there,is pretty bad also
I don't mind poop, pus, puke, blood, mucus, colostomies, ileostomies, huge gaping gag a maggot wounds, projectile trach boogers, necrotising fascitis or GI bleeders spewing from either end...but please, for the love of all that is pure and good in this world, I beg you PLEASE do not make me do anything that involves eyeballs or eye sockets.
Yes, eyeballs get to me too. I don't know why, but I hope I never have to deal with an eyeball problem. I heard about a guy that had a stick impale his eyeball, and I thought I would pass out just imagining it.
I just LOVE this website!! :roll I had NO idea what nursing was like until I got here about a month ago! :roll Absolutely none. At least, not in reality. I don't know what I was thinking! It is SO good to be here and listen to you all and let my imagination go with your descriptive words -- and know that I STILL want to be a nurse! (Although I must admit I have to stop and think at times.) But it's a lot better than getting in clinicals or, worse, graduating and getting on a ward and finding out that I really can't stomach what I have to do. [PS: I'm buying stock in the company that makes Vicks (for under the ol' nose)! Now if there were just some kind of rose-colored glasses that makes everything look good....]
RNonsense
415 Posts
Doing dressing changes on rotten, and I mean ROTTEN feet-that-should-have-been-an-amp-months-ago. Ew, Ew, ewwww.