Tipping My Hat To The Nurses
Here is an interesting article about the “one thing” nurses get grossed out about. There is no common thread other than each individual nurse has her own kryptonite. Read the stories and you will realize how disgusting some jobs in healthcare can really be. I know that after years of being a family doc that few medical things bother me. Hell, I can eat a sandwich and cut open a rectal abscess at the same time. That being said, I too have gagged a few times over the years. So, here’s to you, nurses. Thanks for all you put up with. Now if you were only paid more and had less of a patient load, right? Sorry, that can’t happen because we need to pay all those administrators for doing nothing! And sometimes they get grossed out, too. Like when their bagels at the meetings aren’t fresh or milk for their coffee is outdated.
As a veterinarian, the thing that is most disgusting to me is maggot-infested wounds under mats of wet fur full of pus….
It would be too easy to say “getting puked on” and too generic to just say pus, but the discharge from surgically drained sequestra of chronic OSTEOMYELITIS is (was) my Achilles heel.
While assisting the Chief of Ortho with said procedure on a large tibial abscess (at an overseas Military hospital), I was warned that “this is going to be bad”. It was… we gagged, he took off his mask and gacked into the kick bucket. Of course, being a faithful minion, I followed his lead. Anesthesia didn’t come from behind the screen. O.R. Nurse was miffed at having to find Raytex sponges amidst our effluent (but had left for the scrub area at first whiff). O.R. Tech called us names as we left to wipe faces, rinse mouths, quick rescrub and regown / glove. We finished the procedure without further incident, but 30 years later, I am gritting my teeth at the memory of this “olfactory stimulus => gastric response”.
Eyeballs. Prosthetic eyes. Eye…ooze, gunk, crust…*gak*
After 27 years I could wipe puke and poo and pus off of your guts and help you carry them but if you have something wrong your eye, you’re on your own.
I have spent all my working days in the OR. I’ve never worked on the units. (I don’t like sick people). We OR nurses are an odd lot. So I have seen and done things that would make other medical professionals run for the door, and like you Doug, pus and blood can make me hungry. Any good bowel case needing peppermint spirits is a joy. But the thing that will make me gag and I have to close my eyes, is the removal of an ingrown toenail. Nuf’ said. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.
Amen Doug! The nurses are the backbone of the hospital – which doc wants to deal with Tylenol and bedpan requests at 3am? Many times in the ER the nurse has pulled my sleepy peanuts out of the fire with a well-timed question or re-check. Yes, we’ve all worked with some clunkers, as in any field, but by and large they are great.
And tragically, worse even than their physician counterparts, they have given their public voice to liberal organizations which bleat universally for more government programs, more entitlement spending, more regulation of daily care – with the same glorious results achieved by the AMA et al: more paperwork, less pay, more work, shortages.
And as the docs become more rushed, more burned out, more patient education and face-to-face compassionate listening will fall to these excellent professionals who will themselves be getting their asses chewed for not filling out the latest core measures surveys.
Oh, Doug, you flatterer. You always know the right things to say to get what you want. Now, what do you want?
By the way, I don’t remember the last time anything made me sick or grossed me out. I am one of the few nurses I know who can easily deal with emesis – copious amounts of emesis. But there is one thing that freaks me out so much that I literally have a full body reaction to even seeing it: touch eyes. Can’t even think – ahhhhhhhhhwwwwwwk.