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!

[Furball]

Gawd! Ya know when "Fear Factor" runs out of ideas they just have to come here for the mother load of gross! haha

[RNforLongTime]

Originally posted by adrienurse

Trache care - definately the trache care. Or anything else involving sputum. Bring on anything else. [/quote

I had one last night and this guy could projectile his sputum across the room. GROSS! I took a shower when I got home this morning!

[JohnnyGage]

Originally posted by nurse-lou

I had one last night and this guy could projectile his sputum across the room. GROSS! I took a shower when I got home this morning!

I took care of a trach patient once (very angry at life) who could fire his sputum with deadly accuracy... every nurse was on his (hey! I get to use it for the first time!) fecal roster.

[vaughanmk]

I have to agree with Glad2BeHere. Burn patients with pseudomonas is the worst. We had it spread across the unit once and had 4 patients end up with it. The smell is unforgetable. We even had a patient who had already been grafted get it underneath the graft site. To me there is nothing else that compares.

[JohnnyGage]

What about the smell that results from charcoal/sorbitol poo? Even worse than a GI bleed in my opinion.

[ShelleyERgirl, LPN]

Originally posted by JohnnyGage

I took care of a trach patient once (very angry at life) who could fire his sputum with deadly accuracy... every nurse was on his (hey! I get to use it for the first time!) fecal roster.

:roll :roll

Fecal roster!!!! LMAO Johnny Gage, you have to let me borrow that one. Hilarious!

[BabyNurse513]

I am so glad I work in the NICU. Nothing about little babies are gross (at least not in my unit, we have no surgical patients)

[copperd]

Several years ago, working in surgery, had a 26y/o w/m come in with dental abcesses. I don't think the guy had ever owned a toothbrush, let alone used one. The abcess extended to his collar bone and all I had to do was wash his face. I hemmed and hawed and finally put the warm cloth on his face and the abcess ruptured into his mouth with green pus running out the side of it. Talk about an over developed gag reflex. The smell and the look combined to really mess me up. The other gagger was a man, a car fell on his hand. Holding the hand to prep it, my fingers met in his palm with the crunching making me violently ill. The poor surgeons in both cases did not make too much of a fuss. Lucky for me!

[tazzyjo]

So far my worst experience was an ostomy. It was my first practical in a hospital and I was assigned a patient with an ostomy, an RN showed me how to change and clean the ostomy. The next day it was my turn I had no problem. One week later the poor old fellow was still there and one of my fellow students was assigned to him. Our instructor decided I did such a great job the previous week I could teach her how to change the bag. I explained to her what was required, when I went back to supervise her he was in a wheelchair and before I had a chance to stop her she pulled off the bag and there was a mess and smell everywhere. She was gagging, another student was gagging and I was holding my breath...yuk! :imbar what a mess to clean up. If I never have to do one again, I'd be happy

[Chiaramonte]

Slimy, chunky, green and yellow colored sputum is the worse so I agree with anything that even resembles trach care! God Bless the respiratory therapists!

But the really grossest thing I've seen is a poor river bank resident who came to the ER with a maggot infested gangrenous leg. The other nurse and myself took turns at the trying to cleanse his wounds. To this day rice is the hardest thing to face!

[NotReady4PrimeTime, RN]

There are many of my least-favourite activities already listed in the preceding posts, so I won't spell 'em out. But I will describe the one thing I've done as a nurse that will live with me forever. A couple of years ago we admitted a truck-vs-pedestrian pt to our PICU. The kid had so many internal injuries that we squeezed blood products and IV fluid into him at the fastest possible pace, only to do it all over again a few minutes later. He was bleeding and oozing from everywhere. When his arterial gases began coming out pink, we knew we weren't gonna win. The poor lad died. We pulled a curtain around his body and left him to settle. Several hours later, when all the visitors had finally left, we began the process of cleaning and wrapping the body. When we turned him on his side, fluid poured out of his nose and mouth. He was so puffy that tying his hands was all but impossible. But the thing that I'll never forget was the smell. He smelled like raw chicken that had been left in the sun for three days. We had to burn the mattress. I'll remember him for the rest of my days.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

Our all time least fav is when we have a kid with a stoma and mucus fistula and is dumping big time, we refeed the poop from the bag into the mucus fistula so that there is more nutrient absorption (insert puking smilie here) I just gag when I have to do that!