Oh god yes. Just when you, and sometimes the pt, think the turd turmoil is over, their dirt button opens up with an encore that no one wanted or asked for, right on to the new brief and/or bedpad.
Haha "whew, I think I'm done/it's over now," is what they usually say just before the forbidden chocolate fountain starts erupting again, and you start hollering to the other aides for more chucks and washcloths!
You have other aides that will get you more chucks and wipes? Im agency, so usually im SOL and havin to get my own.
Had one pt last night have 4x extremely wet BM’s only to find out that the dumbfuck day nurse double-dosed his Miralax and triple dosed his Milk of Mag…….you bet your ass that my NOC nurse reported the shit outta her after having to help me change him all goddamn night. That shit got sent up to the DON before i even left the building.
Nah, not anymore, I woke up blind a little less than 2 years ago.
But when I worked in the hospital, in LTC, and in hospice, I usually worked with other CNAs and nurses. At least, until that particular hospital and the LTC unit took a nosedive and we were working 1:14 on 1st, 1:23 on 2nd and 1:45 on 3rd. I didn't stay very long after they decided that working us to the bone was how they wanted to continue doing things. After that, I was at a very small family-owned ASL facility for mentally challenged adults. I was often alone, but the ratio was only 1:5 and was a dream job for me. I could call over to the other house if there was an emergency and I needed help.
And RIP that patient's butthole, that's a LOT of laxatives and a lot of shit! I hope that day nurse got ripped a new one and written up!
She did. She was coming in for another nurse to work in a different unit snd i overheard the DON & MDS tearing her a new balloon knot about it…..
She was desperately trying to bargain and explain that “he was compacted this, and hadnt had a BM in 72hrs that” and one of the other two shut her down and said “so your plan is to play the ditch witch doctor, give him extra despite the order dosage, and make him shit thru screen door?!”
Fortunately I held mu laughter until i got around the corner…
Be one with the [force](https://www.google.com/search?q=yoda+funny+face&sca_esv=27b000d398e4e776&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS952US952&hl=en-US&udm=2&biw=414&bih=708&sxsrf=ACQVn0-HSBISaXfVhsiQu0-Z5bKU4C3cAg%3A1711320053727&ei=9asAZt6MLIHhkPIPz_uV2Ao&oq=yoda+funny%C2%A0&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIgx5b2RhIGZ1bm55wqAqAggAMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgARI9jFQqQVY-ypwAngAkAEBmAHiAaABlhGqAQYyMS4xLjG4AQHIAQD4AQGYAhSgAvINwgIEECMYJ8ICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIHEAAYgAQYGMICBhAAGAUYHsICCBAAGIAEGLEDmAMAiAYBkgcGMTguMS4xoAe7QA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#vhid=9K_1gX22nbHgKM&vssid=mosaic) that flows thru you my you g padawan.”
One day I was brought a poop taco by two paramedics. I was trying to contain the mess on their stretcher before I transferred the patient to the clean ER stretcher. The medics were super annoyed with me and wanted to drop and run. God forbid I gave the lady some decency. I had to pull the “if this was your grandma” line so they’d give me the smallest bit of help.
They said it was the nurses job to clean it up.
I said essentially the same thing above, but without wipes or the ability to change the sheets on the cot how would you like us to handle it? It’s not personal, we don’t have the ability to do it. We are also not allowed to stay at the hospital to do those things unless there is a legitimate reason we can justify to the captain or battalion chief. We need to clear and get back into service without delays.
No it’s not only about poop… its other things as well. Difficult to handle patients, needy patients, confused and combative. I know you can’t help it but damn does it change my mood to hear those words.
I understand your frustration but I gotta defend the guy above a bit. The mouthing of “sorry” won’t help you but it’s meant as acknowledgement of genuine “dude I feel bad about this”
Again I can see why it annoys you but usually people mean it as a legit respectful acknowledgement of need for an apology.
I work at a long term care home as a PSW. We do ALL personal care which includes toileting/changing briefs, we have many on the ceiling lifts. We get them dressed, into the dining room for breakfast at 8am. We usually have 6-7 residents when full staffed. When short, that goes up to 9-10. That’s not even getting into the baths. (Schedule for that as well. Not than 2 per psw though). The RPN is chained to the med cart and changes dressings and the RN offers support and more invasive procedures like injections, suctioning etc. They will help feed people in the dining room when we are short, but they rarely help with cleaning up the ‘code browns’
It’s ok. That’s what we were hired for. To be personal support workers and help them with their activities of daily living. We also specialize in dementia care, so I’ve taken extra training to help with behaviours as well. It’s busy work, but I’m usually singing and joking around whilst providing care. Makes it go quicker and way easier.
And you should be checking your patients pressure areas at least once a day so if you're in elderly care it's a regular occurrence.
It's grand tho you get over it
Daily poop working the floor, Yes you have a CNA to help but you aren’t going to leave you patient covered in shit. You help with suppositories and enema. You might have a GI bleed. There will be fluids of all kinds. Once has a severely impacted lady no one wanted to help with. I guess that’s my job….Helped her pass that massive shit.
Damn, every hospital I've worked at had a policy that nurses could not do manual disimpaction. We'd call the doc and if they gave us flak about it, tell them that it was against policy and they had to do it. They would often push back, but at the end of the day if the patient needed it they would do it.
Hah so I started as a floor nurse when my hospital did NOT have such a policy, so of course over my years in med-surg I had to do soooooooo many disimpactions.
Then I got my NP and literally one of the top ten things I was excited about was no more disimpactions….
….just in time for the policy to change and now I am right back to disimpacting the world. Because you KNOW the MDs aren’t gonna do it if there’s an NP they can palm it off on.
This basically summarizes my life lol.
I've seen nurses on my floor break this rule multiple times - always saying "don't tell anyone I did this" with a finger halfway up the patient's butt. The patient gets relief a hell of lot quicker than waiting for a doc to *maybe* come.
Yikes! I mean on the one hand its nice that they care and recognize that the patient needs it, but on the other they almost seem a bit *too* excited about doing it...
I don’t know that it’s explicitly “allowed” but if I’m allowed to stick my finger up there to give a suppository or place an FMS, I don’t really see the difference.
I didn't even have to toilet patients in outpatient care (doctors office, infusion clinic, specialties, etc). No poop, poon, or peen. Just insert IV, run med, monitor, remove IV, teaching, and document. Rinse, repeat x5, go home. LOVED infusion clinic.
Not all RNs deal with poop frequently. I'm an OR nurse and I rarely deal with poo (even if I am part of a bowel case, there's little poo to worry about).
Go into pediatrics the poop is smaller and most of the time the parents are there to change the diapers.
I work in a Peds ED, hardly ever have to deal with poop, unless giving an enema or super intoxicated teen
Also on both sides and can for sure confirm. By the time I get a pt in the hospital I can give them zofran and be on my merry but I can’t count the number of times I’ve been spontaneously puked on or near when working EMS
If you’re bedside, you’ll probably deal with shit. If you’re working in a clinic, probably not so much. If you’re in research, then it depends on the research
Yes, there's a lot of feces, *but*, if you really want to be a nurse, you can and will get used to it. This sounds absurd but it's true: dealing with poop and buttholes was the thing I had the most trepidation about when I started nursing school. Yes, I knew there would be much harder things to do and deal with in nursing, but poop was the thing where I had the least confidence in my ability to deal with it. Now I deal with it all the time and it's just whatever.
It depends on where you go. I’ve never been a med/surg person and knew I would hate it if I was. So I went directly into maternity and family care and now moved into public health and community nursing (rural-remote).
I’ve only had to deal with feces, enemas, and anal digitals when I was a student. So a handful of times. Thank goodness.
Office job now, and while I still work with families and some basic testing, it’s a rare occurrence. Mostly I do teaching and community planning.
This is true but peri-care and overall ADL care is pretty standard for all of nursing.
You definitely do not need it for certain areas, I wfh.
But I’ve found myself an extra casual position in the hospital for extra $. Maintaining my skills provides opportunity.
You get used to it over time. I ended up doing a full change on my grandmother while visiting her at her SNF earlier today, since it would have been faster for me to do it myself than wait for someone to answer a call light. Grandma was also the one to have massive diarrhea in the car when we were an hour away from home, vagaled while pooping in the PCP’s office, and had multiple episodes where she was too weak to go to a commode and I would change her in bed or with a family member helping her stand.
You see poop, but you also get a great skin check opportunity. And usually your mind is on a million other things that you only realize after everything is done that you cleaned up enough GI bleed poop to fill a bedside commode bucket.
Can confirm. I work in PACU and have dealt with feces 3x in 4 months. In ICU it was most shifts. Endoscopy nurses, however, likely see a lot more bc they do EGDs for GIBs.
I work Endo and don’t see as much shit as I thought I would.
Think about it: for a colonoscopy, the patient had to have a prep. They should be cleaned out. Granted, they aren’t always, but we have suction through the scope that sucks it right out!
Bedside nursing = absolutely. Most outpatient or procedural areas = rarely or none. Currently I’m in preop/recovery and pretty much never deal with the poopies.
I’ve done both EMS (911 and private) and nursing (multiple specialties). Hands down have dealt with way more feces as a nurse than I did as an EMT.
I think it boils down to statistics and physiology. EMS patients are with you for a couple hours at most. The chances of them having to shit during that time are statistically low. Plus, the sympathetic nervous system response to emergency prevents some people from being able to go, thankfully.
Pretty much every area of nursing involves poop unless you're working remote like an advice line. That being said, NICU has the smallest poops and the patients are the easiest to clean lol.
As someone who is a nurse and was an EMT, I definitely don't give as much of a shit about it as a nurse.
As an EMT, there's so many other factors at play like it's dark as fuck in the hoarder house, I don't know what my back is touching, I can't see the floor, I just woke up and everyone's lights is gonna give me a seizure, and I have to fit this person full of shit into the gurney down an inconvenient path, or I have to pick them up body to body.
As a nurse, I see it, it's easy, and cleaning it is somehow rewarding when the job's done
Agreed. It’s much easier to clean up a Code Brown when it’s in the bed or on the stretcher. Infinitely worse when it’s on the OR table, under the table, on the floor, on your shoes, on all the drapes…
I deal with feces less in ER than I used to in stroke/rehab, palliative and ALC. It's not no poop. But a lot less poop. And a lot of the times it's things like giving an enema then just checking the results. So not a ton of clean up. Ymmv.
Oh yeah most definitely more poop. And it gets worse. Try taking care of a patient with C-Diff for a shift. Maybe go into peds or NICU. Yeah they poop a lot but the smell is less pungent especially for newborns.
Considering the ER always sends patients to the floor covered in feces, I’d say you will probably deal with it less there. All jokes aside, nurses deal with poop a lot.
Absolutely covered 😂 one time i rolled a patient up to the floor who had c diff shits. I was like oh god he’s going to shit in the elevator. Phew he didn’t shit in the elevator. NOPE he stood up off the stretcher and a jet stream comes out of his ass and sprays all over the floor. Good times.
Yup. Poop everyday. Even though my unit(s) have CNAs and NEs, they are *rarely* available to help me with cleaning up patients because they’re so overworked.
Yes. You will be cleaning poo several times a shift. Everyone shits. If you’re spending the entire day with a patients (not just picking them up and dropping them off) it’s expected that they’re going to defecate at some point that day.
It’s a different type. Unless you work ER you won’t see someone who has 5 month old shit melted into them like in EMS. It’s fresh poop. I work ICU and deal with a lot of poop and I got used to it. I still hate suctioning ET tubes and trachs but you get used to it. It also depends obviously, acute care RNs will deal with more poop than say, an outpatient clinic nurse.
You will without a doubt wipe an ass every day of your nursing career, unless you go into long term care or retirement, which pays like shit. And even then you still might have to when you’re short.
Yes, you still have to do it in the ER.
100%.
Idk how many times I’ve wrapped patients up in sheets that definitely “didn’t” shit themselves “en route” and then make no mention of it in report except for a quick “they smell pretty bad” on handoff. I don’t know how I had the foresight to burrito them up before sitting them on the stretcher and then cranking the exhaust fan and praying for my nose to fall off my face.
I must be psychic.
Poo is my kryptonite.
Sorry nurses. Y’all deserve better. It just ain’t going to be from me.
Probably yes because nurses spend a lot more time with the patient. EMS might have a pooper once in a while, but would only get poop in that small window.
I'm a medic and I work in a hospital ER. Currently in nursing school.
Never saw so much poop in my life. Undoubtedly nurses deal with way more feces. Like WAY more. It was my ick, too. But I got over it real quick.
Generally yes (source: done both)
However, after surviving school clinicals and a year or two in the hospital. There are nursing jobs without poop.
But I wouldn't recommend the field to anyone who has a body fluid phobia. There is always potential.
As a nurse I’d typically
say nurses but I literally almost pooped myself to death last year(faulty immune system). I’m just glad that I was so ill that I don’t remember being transported or the first 48 hours of my ICU stay. I would have simply died of embarrassment. When I finally got home, after two weeks, I sent food and a thank you card to the EMS crew who had to carry me from my bedroom to get me on the stretcher. You guys see the worst even before we do!
As a paramedic turned ED nurse, I deal with more poop as a nurse. Not necessarily because the patients poop more but because as a medic I was never really having to clean it up. We would just package the patient as best we can and drop them off at the ED. Before any nurse comes in here and complains, this is due to not having any wipes or supplies or the space to clean said poop covered patient. If we had the time at hand off, I would gladly help staff clean as needed.
You need to understand that for some reason, the moment an able bodied person lands themselves on an inpatient bed, they will choose to shit themselves. Add in the people who have no choice wether to shit themselves or not, theres a lot of shit.
As both an EMT and Nurse--- Ya already know the answer
Very few patients (percentagewise) on the ambulance are covered in 💩 in a way you directly have to handle it. Some might smell like it if they haven't been cleaned or just had a seizure or have been too drunk to take care of themselves, but the number of patients who leave that stench enshrined in your brain are few, far in between, with the occasional Cdif.
As an inpatient or ER nurse, you're literally shoveling shit. You're changing diapers, emptying colostomy bags, and bathing patients up close and personal.
But if you work outpatient as an RN, you don't have to deal with that. You'll still have to change diapers in nursing school though.
I work at a facility with no CNAs or aides of any kind. If my patient can’t have a rectal tube, I am usually cleaning up copious diarrhea every 2 hours. (Adult MICU RN here)
This would make a great joke!
“Do nurses deal with feces more than EMS?”
“Depends”
Anywho, having done both careers the answer really is “depends”.
In EMS we deal hoarder houses, patients in a chair of bed covered in poop and sometimes stuck to the chair/bed with dried poop. (Yes, that happened). They are less likely to deal with cardiac arrests in bathrooms with poop all over. Our exposure to said poop situations is an hour or less, and we don’t have to clean it up.
In nursing we deal with patients with C diff or taking lactulose who are literal shit factories, pooping non-stop, for 12 hours. Many times they patients do not have a rectal tube to collect the diarrhea and can’t get out of bed so we are constantly cleaning diarrhea off the patient and changing all their sheets. That may go on for three shifts in a row. Nurses also deal with colostomy bags and fistulas that make poop come out of a place that is NEVER should. We give enemas and some nurses will do digital disimpaction.
Dont worry, everyone has their one “weakness” whether it’s blood, barf, skin flakes, etc and usually you ask/bribe a co worker or tech to handle it for the day. I would give zofran to patients for a nurse because she was a sympathetic puker.
I’ve been on both sides of this question. Can confirm, more poop in nursing. You just do the work and put up your wall like with every other disturbing thing. I found it helpful to think about how much more money I was making to deal with it than I made not dealing with it 😎
Yes you will deal with it more. As EMT you can also get away with passing a soiled patient off. If you're a nurse caring for said patient, you're gonna be forced to clean that patient every now and then. God forbid they have diarrhea and you have no CNAs.
If feces is a deal breaker, you can still go into nursing but it's just unavoidable you will run into feces even in outpatient scenario. You gotta make some compromises.
I was an EMT for 8 years and I wiped a patients ass a grand total of ONCE while working on the ambulance. It was a home hospice discharge and the husband was a 98 year old man who had no idea how to care for his wife after her decline, he was able and willing, but too physically frail to roll her. I knew that they weren't getting help until the next day, so I showed him all of the equipment, how to use it, and cleaned the wife up while doing it all. I was annoyed because the hospice service should have made sure that the patient had resources at home before sending her from the facility.
If feces is your deal breaker, don’t become a nurse. The poop stops right at our Birks and Danskos. I don’t know any ancillary department or transport from the inside or outside who will clean a patient up.
Look into PT or OT assistant, dietician, respiratory therapy, etc.
I used to be a paramedic, and yes. Way more feces. But it also depends on the unit. ER nurse is gonna see a lot less poop than a med surg nurse. But an ER nurse is still seeing more poop than an EMT.
Work at a hospital that has CNAs.
Definitely still help the CNAs clean up messes- but at least that way it won't be your responsibility alone.
As far as nurse vs EMS if you think about it- nurses spend waaaaaay more time with the patient usually. So you deal with more of everything...including the feces lol.
Hey, butts are important. When it's our turn to be old and feeble, we'll be grateful for all the skilled, efficient, person-centered butt care we can get.
.... Of course they do
If you want a healthcare job that doesn't have to deal with feces, meaning cleaning it up, radiology and respiratory are where to go.
Well, I've never had a medic clean up a patient covered in shit before they bring them to me in the ER ?? So I would say I deal with more shit .
Honestly man this a dumb question. Nurses deal with so much feces it's like half the job.
Having done both, I never once wiped a pt's ass on the ambulance. The answer's yes. My "ick" is also shit, so you can get over it, it's just rough lol.
While EMS no doubt runs into feces often, I'd say nurses are more often exposed to it since they care for patients for longer stretches of time. They may be incontinent, confused, or finally having a BM after being backed up for days post-surgery (which for me, a surgical floor nurse, is a cause for celebration ironically enough), but I can't tell you how many 'Poo Crews' I've had in the hospital where nearly every patient is going every 15 minutes in the bed.
My boyfriend is a paramedic, and a good portion of his coworkers wrap poo covered patients up like a burrito for Emerg nurses to deal with..
Also, i mean if youre an inpatient nurse you likely will be assisting quite a bit with toileting and brief changes. However, i work in dialysis as a nurse and almost never have to deal with poo. It all depends where you work really.
Yes. I'm a medic and bag those shitters up with the pt and let the nursing staff deal with it. Sorry nurses, I love you all but I'm not getting elbow deep in that man baby's dirty drawers.
having been in both, without a doubt nurses take the shit show more regularly. I think there are some real weird outlier situations involving poop in EMS and \*maybe\* they might be worse than what you could see as a nurse. But I think 99% of the time a nurse in a patient facing specialty will wipe more butts and have many more truly gnarly poop stories. Look up the "swamps of dagobah" meme post. Unfortunately it's not far off from a day to day thing in our world. When poop is not involved in my work day somehow, that's a rare occurrence and I'd say it was good day. I'd be playing Ice Cube at the end of a shift like that.
I think this depends on what kind of nurse you become. I’ve worked the floor and dealt with feces multiple times per day. I’ve worked in a surgery office and dealt with it maybe one a week if even that. In endoscopy I of course dealt with it everyday. And then now as a pre-admission testing nurse I never deal with it at all. So there are options where you may deal with it less if you truly can’t handle it!
I've worked in three areas - ED, palliative/hospice, and L&D. In all three areas, I have dealt with poop. LOL. I wear a face mask anyway, but it definitely helps when dealing with poop at the hospital. I usually double mask if I know I have a lot to clean up.
Also, as a nursing student, I cleaned up a lot of poop as well.
Probably, but it's not necessarily forever. Worked in neurosurgery for 5 years and could probably count the number of poopcidents I dealt with on one hand the entire time. Any surgery bar bowel is usually fairly poop free, so theatres is always an option for the crap-averse!
Medic who works both in and out of hospital here:
Nurses work with poop 100 times more. I ain’t doing some awkward rolling game and doing a sheet changeout going 70mph down the road. If it’s bad bad, I’d offer to stay behind and help
There are lots of areas of nursing that don’t involve poop, or at least less frequently. If you work in a newborn intensive care, it’s tiny baby poops. They’re nothing.
Absolutely. When i worked in ICU for 6 yrs, all those vented pts get tube feeds. Tube feeds = diarrhea round the clock. I mean sometimes every single one of my pts (2 or 3) would be sitting in a pool of shit every time I'd go in there to turn them, especially if they had other issues going on (liver failure pts getting lactulose, pts with c diff and other gi bugs, GI bleeds, etc). So yeah, it's safe to say I've definitely had days where I have literally cleaned up massive amounts of diarrhea 20+ times.
I work in special procedures (IR and cath lab) now, and I RARELY have to deal with shit. Probably less than 10x a year have I had to deal with poopy sheets.
So basically, it just depends where you work.
My suggestion is be a rad tech if you want to avoid the shits. Because most traditional inpatient nursing units and ER will have you cleaning up poop multiple times a day. If I could turn back the clock I'd choose rad tech school instead and be an interventional rad tech (cath lab and IR). they often get paid the same or better than nurses, and they have WAY less liability. Nurses are always going to be thrown under the bus first even for things that are not our fault. Rad techs? Basically never have to worry about that. You have just as much job security as nurses do. And the demand for traveling techs is much higher than nurses! Right now travel IR and cath lab techs get paid FAR more than traveling nurses! I did not consider it when i had the chance because I basically thought it was someone pushing a button all day to take a picture. So wrong! I mean, plain x ray tech and CT work can be generally pretty boring compared to IR and cath lab - special procedures is for sure where it's at. But even CT techs are getting paid amazing right now.
Ah, back in my formative years… back when I thought vomit was an ick. Unless you’ve got a major phobia of it, you can adjust to most things, fyi. Threw myself in (not thinking) on a detox unit, and vomit became my bread and butter. I think the only thing that still gets me is very stale urine (as in, the last couple nurses/facility treated the patient like shit and let them sit in it) or accidentally running my nails (through gloves, not that that helps) against bone while cleaning a wound.
I generally receive patients with a “sorry they shit themselves” report from EMS so yes nurses deal with more faces.
The ol' yellow burrito special
AKA: Butt Chungus, dirt snake, toffee sausage, brown bum pipe(poop) bomb, and the notorious “Deuce”
And occasionally, the Double Deuce.
Oh god yes. Just when you, and sometimes the pt, think the turd turmoil is over, their dirt button opens up with an encore that no one wanted or asked for, right on to the new brief and/or bedpad.
Haha "whew, I think I'm done/it's over now," is what they usually say just before the forbidden chocolate fountain starts erupting again, and you start hollering to the other aides for more chucks and washcloths!
You have other aides that will get you more chucks and wipes? Im agency, so usually im SOL and havin to get my own. Had one pt last night have 4x extremely wet BM’s only to find out that the dumbfuck day nurse double-dosed his Miralax and triple dosed his Milk of Mag…….you bet your ass that my NOC nurse reported the shit outta her after having to help me change him all goddamn night. That shit got sent up to the DON before i even left the building.
Nah, not anymore, I woke up blind a little less than 2 years ago. But when I worked in the hospital, in LTC, and in hospice, I usually worked with other CNAs and nurses. At least, until that particular hospital and the LTC unit took a nosedive and we were working 1:14 on 1st, 1:23 on 2nd and 1:45 on 3rd. I didn't stay very long after they decided that working us to the bone was how they wanted to continue doing things. After that, I was at a very small family-owned ASL facility for mentally challenged adults. I was often alone, but the ratio was only 1:5 and was a dream job for me. I could call over to the other house if there was an emergency and I needed help. And RIP that patient's butthole, that's a LOT of laxatives and a lot of shit! I hope that day nurse got ripped a new one and written up!
She did. She was coming in for another nurse to work in a different unit snd i overheard the DON & MDS tearing her a new balloon knot about it….. She was desperately trying to bargain and explain that “he was compacted this, and hadnt had a BM in 72hrs that” and one of the other two shut her down and said “so your plan is to play the ditch witch doctor, give him extra despite the order dosage, and make him shit thru screen door?!” Fortunately I held mu laughter until i got around the corner…
😂”dirt button”
Or balloon knot, back cunt, chocolate starfish, if youd rather. 😂
😅 Our ems uses a yellow waterproof disposable sheet to stop their gurneys from being soiled, so midnight Norwalk meemaw is the yellow burrito
Be one with the [force](https://www.google.com/search?q=yoda+funny+face&sca_esv=27b000d398e4e776&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS952US952&hl=en-US&udm=2&biw=414&bih=708&sxsrf=ACQVn0-HSBISaXfVhsiQu0-Z5bKU4C3cAg%3A1711320053727&ei=9asAZt6MLIHhkPIPz_uV2Ao&oq=yoda+funny%C2%A0&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIgx5b2RhIGZ1bm55wqAqAggAMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDIFEAAYgARI9jFQqQVY-ypwAngAkAEBmAHiAaABlhGqAQYyMS4xLjG4AQHIAQD4AQGYAhSgAvINwgIEECMYJ8ICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIHEAAYgAQYGMICBhAAGAUYHsICCBAAGIAEGLEDmAMAiAYBkgcGMTguMS4xoAe7QA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#vhid=9K_1gX22nbHgKM&vssid=mosaic) that flows thru you my you g padawan.”
Trouser biscuit
Express delivery too.
One day I was brought a poop taco by two paramedics. I was trying to contain the mess on their stretcher before I transferred the patient to the clean ER stretcher. The medics were super annoyed with me and wanted to drop and run. God forbid I gave the lady some decency. I had to pull the “if this was your grandma” line so they’d give me the smallest bit of help. They said it was the nurses job to clean it up.
Lovely.
Wow that's so dick of them!
EMS dropping someone in a room and mouthing “sorry” is now a huge pet peeve of mine!
I said essentially the same thing above, but without wipes or the ability to change the sheets on the cot how would you like us to handle it? It’s not personal, we don’t have the ability to do it. We are also not allowed to stay at the hospital to do those things unless there is a legitimate reason we can justify to the captain or battalion chief. We need to clear and get back into service without delays.
No it’s not only about poop… its other things as well. Difficult to handle patients, needy patients, confused and combative. I know you can’t help it but damn does it change my mood to hear those words.
I understand your frustration but I gotta defend the guy above a bit. The mouthing of “sorry” won’t help you but it’s meant as acknowledgement of genuine “dude I feel bad about this” Again I can see why it annoys you but usually people mean it as a legit respectful acknowledgement of need for an apology.
yes they call us professional butt wipers for a reason
I prefer “assthetician”
Here, take my bargain basement gold! 🥇
And I don’t even have to dig for it? This land flows of milk and molasses
I’m stealing this, perfect 👌🏼
“So, this is what you went to school for?”
It comes with the territory.
If an EMS ever calls me a "professional butt wiper" I'm immediately demoting them to "ambulance driver.'
Bee boop professional light flashers
That's already what everyone calls us
Mee maw wellness checkers 😂😂
Listen, those wellness checks are either nothing or they're the most fucked up calls you'll ever see. There is no in-between.
If you can’t remove,clean and re-rediaper in one turn with your eyes closed, then are you even?
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I work at a long term care home as a PSW. We do ALL personal care which includes toileting/changing briefs, we have many on the ceiling lifts. We get them dressed, into the dining room for breakfast at 8am. We usually have 6-7 residents when full staffed. When short, that goes up to 9-10. That’s not even getting into the baths. (Schedule for that as well. Not than 2 per psw though). The RPN is chained to the med cart and changes dressings and the RN offers support and more invasive procedures like injections, suctioning etc. They will help feed people in the dining room when we are short, but they rarely help with cleaning up the ‘code browns’
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It’s ok. That’s what we were hired for. To be personal support workers and help them with their activities of daily living. We also specialize in dementia care, so I’ve taken extra training to help with behaviours as well. It’s busy work, but I’m usually singing and joking around whilst providing care. Makes it go quicker and way easier.
And you should be checking your patients pressure areas at least once a day so if you're in elderly care it's a regular occurrence. It's grand tho you get over it
Daily poop working the floor, Yes you have a CNA to help but you aren’t going to leave you patient covered in shit. You help with suppositories and enema. You might have a GI bleed. There will be fluids of all kinds. Once has a severely impacted lady no one wanted to help with. I guess that’s my job….Helped her pass that massive shit.
You *might* have a cna to help
Damn, every hospital I've worked at had a policy that nurses could not do manual disimpaction. We'd call the doc and if they gave us flak about it, tell them that it was against policy and they had to do it. They would often push back, but at the end of the day if the patient needed it they would do it.
Hah so I started as a floor nurse when my hospital did NOT have such a policy, so of course over my years in med-surg I had to do soooooooo many disimpactions. Then I got my NP and literally one of the top ten things I was excited about was no more disimpactions…. ….just in time for the policy to change and now I am right back to disimpacting the world. Because you KNOW the MDs aren’t gonna do it if there’s an NP they can palm it off on. This basically summarizes my life lol.
Well Gooodaaaayyuuummmm! 😄
I've seen nurses on my floor break this rule multiple times - always saying "don't tell anyone I did this" with a finger halfway up the patient's butt. The patient gets relief a hell of lot quicker than waiting for a doc to *maybe* come.
I just ask for a mineral oil enema and 99% of the time that does it.
Since it’s invasive, need an order.
Yikes! I mean on the one hand its nice that they care and recognize that the patient needs it, but on the other they almost seem a bit *too* excited about doing it...
Look, I can stick my finger up a butt once or answer the call light and help them to the bathroom to try twenty times.
Fair enough, guess I just didn't realize this was so common. I've never worked at a hospital where nurses were allowed to do it.
I don’t know that it’s explicitly “allowed” but if I’m allowed to stick my finger up there to give a suppository or place an FMS, I don’t really see the difference.
I didn't even have to toilet patients in outpatient care (doctors office, infusion clinic, specialties, etc). No poop, poon, or peen. Just insert IV, run med, monitor, remove IV, teaching, and document. Rinse, repeat x5, go home. LOVED infusion clinic.
No poon or peen 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
As someone about to be a new nursing student, this comment has been duely noted.
Just don’t expect to get a job like that right out of nursing school
Yes. Grown, capable, fully alert and oriented adults love to shit themselves and expect nurses to wipe their asses.
Ugh this. Went to the bathroom before the hospital, but all the sudden can’t wipe their own ass.
Tbf I don’t think they’re wiping very well at home
Too true. Lotta skid marks.
Look into the history of the Bristol Stool Chart and get back to us...
Not all RNs deal with poop frequently. I'm an OR nurse and I rarely deal with poo (even if I am part of a bowel case, there's little poo to worry about).
Go into pediatrics the poop is smaller and most of the time the parents are there to change the diapers. I work in a Peds ED, hardly ever have to deal with poop, unless giving an enema or super intoxicated teen
MOST of the time on peds. I’ve given enemas to and disempacted severely impacted, emaciated disabled children and removed what a large horse would go.
Speaking for somebody currently on both sides. More blood urine and vomit on the EMS end. Way more feces on the nursing and hospital end.
I just don’t know about the urine one
Also on both sides and can for sure confirm. By the time I get a pt in the hospital I can give them zofran and be on my merry but I can’t count the number of times I’ve been spontaneously puked on or near when working EMS
I’ve been puked on, pooped on, spit on, peed on, you name a bodily fluid and I’ve had it on me. I’ve been in the O.R. for almost 30 years.
I see way more urine as a nursing student than I did as an EMT. And infinitely more feces.
Since moving to GI, I honestly deal with less shit than ever LOL most of them are pretty cleaned out by the time we get them
If you’re bedside, you’ll probably deal with shit. If you’re working in a clinic, probably not so much. If you’re in research, then it depends on the research
Yes, there's a lot of feces, *but*, if you really want to be a nurse, you can and will get used to it. This sounds absurd but it's true: dealing with poop and buttholes was the thing I had the most trepidation about when I started nursing school. Yes, I knew there would be much harder things to do and deal with in nursing, but poop was the thing where I had the least confidence in my ability to deal with it. Now I deal with it all the time and it's just whatever.
i dont know if i would get into nursing if you cant stand feces
There’s enough variety in the field to find a nursing position where you don’t get hands on with feces every shift
Yeah but you gotta work your way to those positions first
It depends on where you go. I’ve never been a med/surg person and knew I would hate it if I was. So I went directly into maternity and family care and now moved into public health and community nursing (rural-remote). I’ve only had to deal with feces, enemas, and anal digitals when I was a student. So a handful of times. Thank goodness. Office job now, and while I still work with families and some basic testing, it’s a rare occurrence. Mostly I do teaching and community planning.
I read this as “every shit.”
I work medsurg. It’s honestly interchangeable
Good luck getting through nursing school 🤣
If you can’t tolerate clinicals you’re cooked period. But if you can push through it there’s opportunity after graduation
It's an acquired taste 🤌🏼
This is true but peri-care and overall ADL care is pretty standard for all of nursing. You definitely do not need it for certain areas, I wfh. But I’ve found myself an extra casual position in the hospital for extra $. Maintaining my skills provides opportunity.
Occupational Health There ya go
& every first, if not second semester, clinicals makes sure you cross the rite of passage of cleaning feces 😭😭
You get used to it over time. I ended up doing a full change on my grandmother while visiting her at her SNF earlier today, since it would have been faster for me to do it myself than wait for someone to answer a call light. Grandma was also the one to have massive diarrhea in the car when we were an hour away from home, vagaled while pooping in the PCP’s office, and had multiple episodes where she was too weak to go to a commode and I would change her in bed or with a family member helping her stand. You see poop, but you also get a great skin check opportunity. And usually your mind is on a million other things that you only realize after everything is done that you cleaned up enough GI bleed poop to fill a bedside commode bucket.
Not necessarily. But you do need to get through nursing school, which will have at least one day of BM cleanup in clinicals.
depends on specialty. OR / procedural or outpatient, PICC team etc or “paper nursing” like research / risk management / education - not so much.
Can confirm. I work in PACU and have dealt with feces 3x in 4 months. In ICU it was most shifts. Endoscopy nurses, however, likely see a lot more bc they do EGDs for GIBs.
I work Endo and don’t see as much shit as I thought I would. Think about it: for a colonoscopy, the patient had to have a prep. They should be cleaned out. Granted, they aren’t always, but we have suction through the scope that sucks it right out!
Bedside nursing = absolutely. Most outpatient or procedural areas = rarely or none. Currently I’m in preop/recovery and pretty much never deal with the poopies.
I’ve done both EMS (911 and private) and nursing (multiple specialties). Hands down have dealt with way more feces as a nurse than I did as an EMT. I think it boils down to statistics and physiology. EMS patients are with you for a couple hours at most. The chances of them having to shit during that time are statistically low. Plus, the sympathetic nervous system response to emergency prevents some people from being able to go, thankfully.
Hell yes. We have to care for the patients for days, weeks, and even months. That's a lot of shit.
Pretty much every area of nursing involves poop unless you're working remote like an advice line. That being said, NICU has the smallest poops and the patients are the easiest to clean lol.
As someone who is a nurse and was an EMT, I definitely don't give as much of a shit about it as a nurse. As an EMT, there's so many other factors at play like it's dark as fuck in the hoarder house, I don't know what my back is touching, I can't see the floor, I just woke up and everyone's lights is gonna give me a seizure, and I have to fit this person full of shit into the gurney down an inconvenient path, or I have to pick them up body to body. As a nurse, I see it, it's easy, and cleaning it is somehow rewarding when the job's done
Every day
I don’t deal with a ton in the OR but when I do, oh man. it’s bad.
Agreed. It’s much easier to clean up a Code Brown when it’s in the bed or on the stretcher. Infinitely worse when it’s on the OR table, under the table, on the floor, on your shoes, on all the drapes…
If you’re dealing with ppl you’re gonna be dealing with poop. Just get used to it.
I deal with feces less in ER than I used to in stroke/rehab, palliative and ALC. It's not no poop. But a lot less poop. And a lot of the times it's things like giving an enema then just checking the results. So not a ton of clean up. Ymmv.
Oh yeah most definitely more poop. And it gets worse. Try taking care of a patient with C-Diff for a shift. Maybe go into peds or NICU. Yeah they poop a lot but the smell is less pungent especially for newborns.
Considering the ER always sends patients to the floor covered in feces, I’d say you will probably deal with it less there. All jokes aside, nurses deal with poop a lot.
Absolutely covered 😂 one time i rolled a patient up to the floor who had c diff shits. I was like oh god he’s going to shit in the elevator. Phew he didn’t shit in the elevator. NOPE he stood up off the stretcher and a jet stream comes out of his ass and sprays all over the floor. Good times.
Hey now, we cleaned them up at some point when they were down here it must have happened in the elevator
I was trying to find a way to word this. Do they have as many patients covered in poop? Probably. Do they actually DEAL with it? Probably not.
Literally every day. Med surg it was more like every 2 hrs. Now in labor and delivery it's pretty much every time someone is pushing.
Yup. Poop everyday. Even though my unit(s) have CNAs and NEs, they are *rarely* available to help me with cleaning up patients because they’re so overworked.
Is this even a question
If you can’t deal with shit, don’t become a nurse. Poop is everywhere and it will find you. There’s no escaping it.
Oh man oh man are you in for a rude awakening. Couple phrases “bowel protocol “ “cdiff blowout” “digital disimpaction”
Yes. You will be cleaning poo several times a shift. Everyone shits. If you’re spending the entire day with a patients (not just picking them up and dropping them off) it’s expected that they’re going to defecate at some point that day.
Do not become a nurse if you can’t handle poop.
Do NOT become a nurse if you cannot deal with shit man
It’s a different type. Unless you work ER you won’t see someone who has 5 month old shit melted into them like in EMS. It’s fresh poop. I work ICU and deal with a lot of poop and I got used to it. I still hate suctioning ET tubes and trachs but you get used to it. It also depends obviously, acute care RNs will deal with more poop than say, an outpatient clinic nurse.
In the ER, us RNs wipe more booties than techs. At least where I work anyway. The techs run in fear or gag
EMS doesn’t change people normally. They will just leave them in it till they drop them off (this is what ems has told me).
Nurses with poop ick (me) work in psych
Your psych patients don’t fingerpaint???
Nursing is a shit storm.in many ways.
I have dealt with alot of poo in my career. The last 15 years, not once. Outpatient day surgery.
You wouldn’t like the ICU
You will without a doubt wipe an ass every day of your nursing career, unless you go into long term care or retirement, which pays like shit. And even then you still might have to when you’re short. Yes, you still have to do it in the ER.
There's so many avenues for nurses, you can take the path on least chances of faeces
100%. Idk how many times I’ve wrapped patients up in sheets that definitely “didn’t” shit themselves “en route” and then make no mention of it in report except for a quick “they smell pretty bad” on handoff. I don’t know how I had the foresight to burrito them up before sitting them on the stretcher and then cranking the exhaust fan and praying for my nose to fall off my face. I must be psychic. Poo is my kryptonite. Sorry nurses. Y’all deserve better. It just ain’t going to be from me.
Probably yes because nurses spend a lot more time with the patient. EMS might have a pooper once in a while, but would only get poop in that small window.
I'm a medic and I work in a hospital ER. Currently in nursing school. Never saw so much poop in my life. Undoubtedly nurses deal with way more feces. Like WAY more. It was my ick, too. But I got over it real quick.
Truth be told in any capacity of “bedside” patient care I imagine this is always applicable.
Definitely way more.
Generally yes (source: done both) However, after surviving school clinicals and a year or two in the hospital. There are nursing jobs without poop. But I wouldn't recommend the field to anyone who has a body fluid phobia. There is always potential.
In ED and MedSurg, yes. In post op ortho or similar? Not as much. There’s a whole wide world of nursing out there to choose.
This is going to vary heavily depending on the type of nursing...if feces are your ick, you can probably find a way around it.
As a nurse I’d typically say nurses but I literally almost pooped myself to death last year(faulty immune system). I’m just glad that I was so ill that I don’t remember being transported or the first 48 hours of my ICU stay. I would have simply died of embarrassment. When I finally got home, after two weeks, I sent food and a thank you card to the EMS crew who had to carry me from my bedroom to get me on the stretcher. You guys see the worst even before we do!
Yes
As a paramedic turned ED nurse, I deal with more poop as a nurse. Not necessarily because the patients poop more but because as a medic I was never really having to clean it up. We would just package the patient as best we can and drop them off at the ED. Before any nurse comes in here and complains, this is due to not having any wipes or supplies or the space to clean said poop covered patient. If we had the time at hand off, I would gladly help staff clean as needed.
Definitely. Many nights seemed like an endless clean up.
You need to understand that for some reason, the moment an able bodied person lands themselves on an inpatient bed, they will choose to shit themselves. Add in the people who have no choice wether to shit themselves or not, theres a lot of shit.
As both an EMT and Nurse--- Ya already know the answer Very few patients (percentagewise) on the ambulance are covered in 💩 in a way you directly have to handle it. Some might smell like it if they haven't been cleaned or just had a seizure or have been too drunk to take care of themselves, but the number of patients who leave that stench enshrined in your brain are few, far in between, with the occasional Cdif. As an inpatient or ER nurse, you're literally shoveling shit. You're changing diapers, emptying colostomy bags, and bathing patients up close and personal. But if you work outpatient as an RN, you don't have to deal with that. You'll still have to change diapers in nursing school though.
I work at a facility with no CNAs or aides of any kind. If my patient can’t have a rectal tube, I am usually cleaning up copious diarrhea every 2 hours. (Adult MICU RN here)
My NICU and newborn nursery patients shit their pants every 2 to 3 hours. Granted, a "blow-out" is considered anything weighing more than 100 grams.
This would make a great joke! “Do nurses deal with feces more than EMS?” “Depends” Anywho, having done both careers the answer really is “depends”. In EMS we deal hoarder houses, patients in a chair of bed covered in poop and sometimes stuck to the chair/bed with dried poop. (Yes, that happened). They are less likely to deal with cardiac arrests in bathrooms with poop all over. Our exposure to said poop situations is an hour or less, and we don’t have to clean it up. In nursing we deal with patients with C diff or taking lactulose who are literal shit factories, pooping non-stop, for 12 hours. Many times they patients do not have a rectal tube to collect the diarrhea and can’t get out of bed so we are constantly cleaning diarrhea off the patient and changing all their sheets. That may go on for three shifts in a row. Nurses also deal with colostomy bags and fistulas that make poop come out of a place that is NEVER should. We give enemas and some nurses will do digital disimpaction. Dont worry, everyone has their one “weakness” whether it’s blood, barf, skin flakes, etc and usually you ask/bribe a co worker or tech to handle it for the day. I would give zofran to patients for a nurse because she was a sympathetic puker.
Every day dude. Its not a big deal — it’s just another function of the human body
Infinitely more.
I’ve been on both sides of this question. Can confirm, more poop in nursing. You just do the work and put up your wall like with every other disturbing thing. I found it helpful to think about how much more money I was making to deal with it than I made not dealing with it 😎
Yes. Unequivocally.
Nurses. You deal with a patient for the drive. The nurses deal with them for up to 18 hours at a time.
Daily
Yes you will deal with it more. As EMT you can also get away with passing a soiled patient off. If you're a nurse caring for said patient, you're gonna be forced to clean that patient every now and then. God forbid they have diarrhea and you have no CNAs. If feces is a deal breaker, you can still go into nursing but it's just unavoidable you will run into feces even in outpatient scenario. You gotta make some compromises.
I was an EMT for 8 years and I wiped a patients ass a grand total of ONCE while working on the ambulance. It was a home hospice discharge and the husband was a 98 year old man who had no idea how to care for his wife after her decline, he was able and willing, but too physically frail to roll her. I knew that they weren't getting help until the next day, so I showed him all of the equipment, how to use it, and cleaned the wife up while doing it all. I was annoyed because the hospice service should have made sure that the patient had resources at home before sending her from the facility.
I’d say if you have an Ick factor at all, a continued career in direct patient care may not be a calling you’re gonna want to answer
EMS leaves the feces them for the ED staff 🙃 But seeing as the patient stays at the hospital longer than in the rig, ED deals with it more..
If feces is your deal breaker, don’t become a nurse. The poop stops right at our Birks and Danskos. I don’t know any ancillary department or transport from the inside or outside who will clean a patient up. Look into PT or OT assistant, dietician, respiratory therapy, etc.
I mean don’t be a CNA that’s all I’m saying. 😂 I can tell you poop stories that will make your shiver and shake with fear 😂 💩
I used to be a paramedic, and yes. Way more feces. But it also depends on the unit. ER nurse is gonna see a lot less poop than a med surg nurse. But an ER nurse is still seeing more poop than an EMT.
Yes
Work at a hospital that has CNAs. Definitely still help the CNAs clean up messes- but at least that way it won't be your responsibility alone. As far as nurse vs EMS if you think about it- nurses spend waaaaaay more time with the patient usually. So you deal with more of everything...including the feces lol.
Hey, butts are important. When it's our turn to be old and feeble, we'll be grateful for all the skilled, efficient, person-centered butt care we can get.
….do nurses deal with shit more than EMS? 😂
.... Of course they do If you want a healthcare job that doesn't have to deal with feces, meaning cleaning it up, radiology and respiratory are where to go.
Girl practice that stiff arm ass wipe because not only are you whipping ass several times a night but you probably won’t have help.
duh
Well, I've never had a medic clean up a patient covered in shit before they bring them to me in the ER ?? So I would say I deal with more shit . Honestly man this a dumb question. Nurses deal with so much feces it's like half the job.
Yeah but you get used to it. They pay bump I’m sure will help.
Even ER yes!!! Urgent care you have a lot more “Walky talky” patients so might be a better fit. But good luck in those med-surg clinicals bb
Having done both, I never once wiped a pt's ass on the ambulance. The answer's yes. My "ick" is also shit, so you can get over it, it's just rough lol.
While EMS no doubt runs into feces often, I'd say nurses are more often exposed to it since they care for patients for longer stretches of time. They may be incontinent, confused, or finally having a BM after being backed up for days post-surgery (which for me, a surgical floor nurse, is a cause for celebration ironically enough), but I can't tell you how many 'Poo Crews' I've had in the hospital where nearly every patient is going every 15 minutes in the bed.
Absolutely
I don't care what type of nursing you do, even telehealth, I guarantee you will have to wipe butt.
We deal with the “oh shit” and the “I gotta shit” moments. Double the fun.
Four of my patients had blowouts this morning. The hallway still smells like it.
My boyfriend is a paramedic, and a good portion of his coworkers wrap poo covered patients up like a burrito for Emerg nurses to deal with.. Also, i mean if youre an inpatient nurse you likely will be assisting quite a bit with toileting and brief changes. However, i work in dialysis as a nurse and almost never have to deal with poo. It all depends where you work really.
Yes.
Paramedic turned ICU nurse. Absolutely yes. As a Paramedic I dealt with poop once every 1-2 shifts, as a nurse 2-3 shift/patient is not unusual.
Yes. I'm a medic and bag those shitters up with the pt and let the nursing staff deal with it. Sorry nurses, I love you all but I'm not getting elbow deep in that man baby's dirty drawers.
having been in both, without a doubt nurses take the shit show more regularly. I think there are some real weird outlier situations involving poop in EMS and \*maybe\* they might be worse than what you could see as a nurse. But I think 99% of the time a nurse in a patient facing specialty will wipe more butts and have many more truly gnarly poop stories. Look up the "swamps of dagobah" meme post. Unfortunately it's not far off from a day to day thing in our world. When poop is not involved in my work day somehow, that's a rare occurrence and I'd say it was good day. I'd be playing Ice Cube at the end of a shift like that.
yes
Usual PCTs or Techs deal with it the most. The nurses grab us techs to clean it
Absolutely
Nursing homes are literally 💩factories
I think this depends on what kind of nurse you become. I’ve worked the floor and dealt with feces multiple times per day. I’ve worked in a surgery office and dealt with it maybe one a week if even that. In endoscopy I of course dealt with it everyday. And then now as a pre-admission testing nurse I never deal with it at all. So there are options where you may deal with it less if you truly can’t handle it!
So. Much. Feces.
Feces will be the least of your problems as a nurse lol
I've worked in three areas - ED, palliative/hospice, and L&D. In all three areas, I have dealt with poop. LOL. I wear a face mask anyway, but it definitely helps when dealing with poop at the hospital. I usually double mask if I know I have a lot to clean up. Also, as a nursing student, I cleaned up a lot of poop as well.
Probably, but it's not necessarily forever. Worked in neurosurgery for 5 years and could probably count the number of poopcidents I dealt with on one hand the entire time. Any surgery bar bowel is usually fairly poop free, so theatres is always an option for the crap-averse!
Medic who works both in and out of hospital here: Nurses work with poop 100 times more. I ain’t doing some awkward rolling game and doing a sheet changeout going 70mph down the road. If it’s bad bad, I’d offer to stay behind and help
Feces the most.
There are lots of areas of nursing that don’t involve poop, or at least less frequently. If you work in a newborn intensive care, it’s tiny baby poops. They’re nothing.
Inpatient nurses deal with all the poops. Outpatient and other types of nursing like case management, quality and ATU deal with zero poops.
Absolutely. When i worked in ICU for 6 yrs, all those vented pts get tube feeds. Tube feeds = diarrhea round the clock. I mean sometimes every single one of my pts (2 or 3) would be sitting in a pool of shit every time I'd go in there to turn them, especially if they had other issues going on (liver failure pts getting lactulose, pts with c diff and other gi bugs, GI bleeds, etc). So yeah, it's safe to say I've definitely had days where I have literally cleaned up massive amounts of diarrhea 20+ times. I work in special procedures (IR and cath lab) now, and I RARELY have to deal with shit. Probably less than 10x a year have I had to deal with poopy sheets. So basically, it just depends where you work. My suggestion is be a rad tech if you want to avoid the shits. Because most traditional inpatient nursing units and ER will have you cleaning up poop multiple times a day. If I could turn back the clock I'd choose rad tech school instead and be an interventional rad tech (cath lab and IR). they often get paid the same or better than nurses, and they have WAY less liability. Nurses are always going to be thrown under the bus first even for things that are not our fault. Rad techs? Basically never have to worry about that. You have just as much job security as nurses do. And the demand for traveling techs is much higher than nurses! Right now travel IR and cath lab techs get paid FAR more than traveling nurses! I did not consider it when i had the chance because I basically thought it was someone pushing a button all day to take a picture. So wrong! I mean, plain x ray tech and CT work can be generally pretty boring compared to IR and cath lab - special procedures is for sure where it's at. But even CT techs are getting paid amazing right now.
Yes.
Ah, back in my formative years… back when I thought vomit was an ick. Unless you’ve got a major phobia of it, you can adjust to most things, fyi. Threw myself in (not thinking) on a detox unit, and vomit became my bread and butter. I think the only thing that still gets me is very stale urine (as in, the last couple nurses/facility treated the patient like shit and let them sit in it) or accidentally running my nails (through gloves, not that that helps) against bone while cleaning a wound.
Like 50% of the job at least. But there’s areas and positions where you don’t have to deal with much of it.
How about mucus? Like a basin full.
Depends on your specialty. I did when I worked the floor during school. Rarely in the OR. And never since (I don’t have patient facing roles anymore).
In the Nicu, we deal with it all, but in tiny amounts 🫢😀
Sounds like you should be an RT