Worst nursing proceedure ever....

[night owl]

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!

[c.wicks]

Normally, I have a cast iron stomach and nerves of steel until this one patient brought me to my knees. The overwhelming stench of decomposing flesh assaulted my senses as I entered the door. I thought to myself, "I can deal with this, I've done it before", but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see.

"You really don't want to hear the rest of this story....do you?"

[OzNurse69]

Yeah, we really do....

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

Oral care is just about the worst......dentures are some of the grossest things I've ever dealt with. THE worst procedure I've ever personally had to do was the daily enema that one of the residents in my first LTC facility had every morning, precisely at 0900. She was A & O, but she was about 300# and one of the fussiest people I've ever met. She was totally dependent and had to be turned on her side (took 4 people to do it without killing our backs, and where can you find 4 staff at one time in the average nursing home?), then I had to thread precisely one foot of tubing up her bum, and perform the ever-popular return-flow until she passed enough gas to satisfy her. Stinkiest farts you ever smelled, too......never did figure out what she ate to make them so noxious. THEN, we had to roll her onto the bedpan and sit her up straight in bed so she could poop. She'd had this procedure every day of her life for 10+ years, it was the only way she could get rid of gas and have a BM. I was always fearful of perforating her lower bowel, but she had some rather strange anatomy and the enema wouldn't work if you didn't push the tubing up high enough. Anyway, she would chew you out if you were so much as a minute late, complain all through the procedure, bark instructions at you as if you were completely stupid, and threaten to tell her husband (a retired lawyer) if you did even the slightest thing that was not to her satisfaction.

This whole thing took only about 15 minutes, but it was the worst 15 minutes of the shift.

[RNanne]

Yes, please. We just gotta hear this!!!

[rachel h, BSN, RN]

Mucous is definitely disgusting... GOD BLESS respiratory therapists! I can stand the suctioning and trach cares, but I just about tossed my cookies last time I had to empty a suction container that had been collecting the mucous and saline from every time the patient was suctioned... imagine dumping out 900 ccs of lumpy mucous and saline... I'm gagging just thinking about it...

And the smell of C-Dif poop... EEEWWW!!!

[kids]

Originally posted by RN2bNC

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 used to work in LTC...I had this same LOL 5 evenings a week for a year and not ONCE was I able to remove her glass eye and put it to soak at night...moved to day shift and was never able to insert it in the morning either. I traded colostomy care for someone else doing the eye.

The absolute worst thing I have ever encountered was a (homeless) man who had some sort of rare optic nerve ca...they removed his eyeball but it was way to late. Thankfully the poor man never woke up from surgery and was totally out of it. It was a necrotizing wound. We had orders to irrigate and pack the socket BID...except the "socket" went all of the way thru his palate. I honestly tried to be able to do his wound care, I even went on my day off to watch someone else do the wound care so I could see how to do it... I ended up with my head between my knees crying and vomiting. When I came back to work 2 days later the surgeon had come in and packed the wound and patched the eye...we had new orders to perform frequent oral care and suctioning and a written order that said "DO NOT remove eye patch, DO NOT assess wound." He died after about 4 days.

[panda_181]

Glad2behere...did that guy live?

Amanda :)

[Heather333]

Anything that has to do with sputum! Gag! Barf! Yuck! Makes me heave just thinking about it.

Heather

[melissa24]

I am soooooo grossed out just reading this thread. :chuckle

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Sputum and trachs don't bother me a bit. Poop is not to bad either, and I have disimpacted more patients than I can count. I love to NT suction patients.

But I can't stand being around a drunk patient that vomits. I usually have to leave..."um, excuse me while I go get some towels".

[semstr]

once had to take care of a patient, who after an accident was absolutely "frontal".

He was not only incontinent of all body-fluids, but he also masturbated non-stop and refused to let himself be washed.

Even thinking of him, makes me gag!

[debRNo1]

Litter box/Trach care

thats a toss up

guess Ill pick the cat box too