1. Once I went to go check on an elderly woman in a nursing home and I walked in on poop completely smeared on every wall in the bathroom and all on the floor. She was sitting there smiling. Welcome to nursing!
2. I was taking care of a patient with late stage parkinsons disease who was bedridden. He suffered from really bad contractures which means his arms were rigidly immobilized and he barely had use of his legs. The facility had him in a brief (aka an adult diaper) and my fellow student and I were in charge of changing him after he pooped all over himself that morning. There was feces everywhere, and it seemed to take forever to get him completely cleaned up. Just as we thought we were finished, the man stopped us. He asked if we would put lotion on his testicles and pull down his foreskin over his penis before we finished. The other student and I looked at each other in panic, but we had no choice than to do what he said because he obviously couldnt do it himself. Thanks to nursing school, I can now say I have lotioned up an elderly mans balls and wrestled his foreskin into submission all in the name of learning.
3. The bullying and the way student nurses are completely ignored. My first ever placement my mentor didnt even talk to me for the first 2 weeks. Many days didnt even stop for a break during shifts. Nursing in the UK is in a really bad place, we need to protect our student nurses and stamp out the bullying. Not many students are making it to graduation between money and conditions. We should all be very worried for what the future holds for nursing care in the NHS.
4. Hello I am a third year nursing student!
Well for starters, every day is crazy. But this one time I was caring for an elderly patient who did not have much control of her bowels.
With a little help from another nurse, we lifted this patient up in an overhead sling to provide some cleaning to her bottom. This is normally a time when patients do have a bowel movement due to the more upright position that they are in. Just as we are about to lower the lift I hear a rippling sound come out of her backside and quickly step out of the way just in time to (Continued)
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dodge the missile of [poop] that came shooting out of her rectum. Of course, I kept composed and did not laugh or make any rude gestures towards her but I was dying on the inside, like literally dying.
5. On my first day on my first placement as a student nurse, I was looking after a dementia patient, and no one told me he had a fake eye. I was horrified when he pulled his eye out of its socket and rolled it down the corridor. I went running after it to give it back to him he washed it in his orange juice and put it back in his socket while I stood there in surprise. Later that week, the same man threw a bowl of soup at me. It was still hot. My reflexs got a lot better after that.
6. A confused elderly lady once cupped my balls, kissed me on the cheek, and giggled like a school girl while I checked her back and bottom for pressure sores. I couldnt face what might happen if I did an ECG so had to beg another student to do it.
7. Had a cellphone shoved up my bum hole while i was changing his plasters from surgery. i was the one who needed surgery after that.
8. I answered a call bell pressed by a patient I had assisted onto a commode thinking he was finished, instead he said he needed some help and asked me to massage his poo out for him.
9. I once had a patient who was a 10/10 for pain. When I asked if there was anything else I could get for him, he said you could slap me on my ass and get me going! 10/10 pain my ass.
10. One day when I was on my endoscopy rotation we had a patient who had radiation proctitis as a result of prostate cancer treatment and required a procedure about once a year to alleviate the symptoms. (Continued)
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Anyway, he has the procedure and is wheeled back to post op. He tells me he needs to poop. I reassure him, and tell him its just the air they pumped into his colon for the procedure. (Id been in the room with him for the procedure and his colon was definitely empty!). I hooked him up to a monitor and head off to check on someone else. About 15 min later the buzzer in the toilet goes off. As I head down the corridor, I notice that this guys bed is empty. Opening the door to the toilet, Im greeted with bloody fluid all over the floor, up the walls, and into the centre cubicle where my patient is sitting on the toilet looking a bit sheepish. Sorry Nurse, I seem to have made a bit of a mess!
It took us half an hour to clean up. He was ok too, nothing major had happened - he went back for a rescope and was kept in overnight for observation.
11. We were learning how to do dressing changes at a local nursing home. Mr. Smith had a non-healing skin lesion on his chest that turned out to be skin cancer. It ended getting so bad that his chest wall, skin, muscle tissue, and sternum eroded away. Essentially he would sit in the corner of his room and you could see the pulsation of his heart through the big, pink hole in his chest. Our brilliant nursing instructor tried to teach us how to change a dressing, but forgot to dilute the cleaning solution before switching out for the new gauze. She essentially soaked gauze in undiluted bleach and stuffed it onto his heart. He lived. She got fired.
12. Just a little background, if placement where I am isnt NHS they can be a bit funny about leaving you on your own because they dont think our trainings good enough, so we usually dont get left alone, particularly with patients with challenging behaviour.
I was sat with a patient having lunch surrounded by staff and other patients, this particular patient wasnt very happy with their options, cup and plate went flying, staff scattered, no one presses the alarm and I get punched and scratched in the neck while the patient grabs my top. Im left being held by the top, looking like Ive wet myself covered in their drink and trying to find a member of staff to help me out. No one turned up and Im still being held so I decided to strap in and deal with the situation myself, by the time a member of staff shows up to help; the patients calm, Ive been released, were chatting, my legs are feeling very cold and I get told off for being alone with a patient.
13. My patient rang his bell saying he needed the toilet. As soon as he stood up (Continued)
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the floodgates, front and back opened. Luckily I had a pad on me, what I didnt know as a student was that pads werent designed to capture free flowing liquid straight away. At this point I was on my knees panicking and praying it wouldnt get on my face because it kept going and going and going. Lets just say my late shift couldnt have ended any worse.
14. Whilst doing the morning wash round, an elderly gentleman asked me for a wash bowl and a razor. I thought this was pretty weird as he didnt have any facial hair but gave him it anyway. A few minutes later i popped my head in to ask if everything was okay and to my horror he had one knee up to his shoulder and was shaving his balls. He just carried on and started a conversation like it was nothing.
15. I trained as a midwife so slightly different, but I was once performing a vaginal examination on a client at the exact moment her membranes ruptured (waters broke).
It was like a log flume, my clothes were soaked through- right down to my underwear! I had to change into some highly attractive paper pants we give to women postnatally?
16. Used to be a student aide in a nurses office in a middle school. One of my kids hands me a bag with his clothes in it and asks me to carry it around for him while I was chaperoning him for the day (he had seizures). Well, I started smelling crap. It was not from the common core crap they have now I asked him did you have an accident in your pants bud? He said no, in the clothes you have in the bag I did though. I about died. Ill never hold a bag for another kid again lol.
17. I was looking after a child who had been putting push pins into a nerf gun and using it to pop balloons. I guess one of the pins got stuck so he turned it round to look down the barrel and Yeah. Pin in the eye.
18. I was on ward round on a urology Ward. They doctor told me prior to going into a patients room that the patient actually had a (Continued)
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hydrocele (sack of fluid that firms around the testicular area). I had no idea what this was but nodded along politely and when into the room. The patient whips his pants down without a being prompted and revealed that I can only describe as a space hopper between his legs. I was in stunned silence and dont know where to look. Reminded me of Randy Marsh in that South Park episode!
19. There was a physio on the ward and doing exercises with a patient; specifically squats and this lady just took a massive dump in the middle of the ward. All the other patients got up and left the ward space.
20. As a student you are expected to do a community placement, I was with the district nurses (nurse who come to your house if you are unable to reach your gp surgery) from November to Febuary.
In the 2 weeks before christmas the whole nursing team bought the same christmas jumper and worse tinsel in their hair. My mentor and myself adore christmas and strung fairy lights in the car as it was our office and the regular patients we saw we couldnt resist the temptation to sing christmas carols as we knocked on their door before going in to treat them. We got so many mince pies and chocolates in those few weeks! Yum yum!
21. I was once placing a urinary catheter in a male patient with dementia. Halfway through the procedure, he raised his hand, put a hand on each boob and left them there. I asked him to let go but he wasnt complying. I could do nothing about it as I was gloved up at the time with lubricant all over my gloves, and there were no other nurses within calling distance. So I spent the next ten minutes finishing off the procedure, with his hands on my boobs.
22. When I was a student nurse I worked on a long stay ward for people with learning disabilities who had mental health problems. One afternoon I was charged with dishing up dinner. Every other day there had been gravy to go with the food but on this particular day there wasnt, instead there was a (Continued)
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creamy sauce. There was no dessert either
I dished up and poured the sauce on the food. Half way through, one lady said I dont like semolina Turned out, Id put the semolina dessert all over the cauliflower bake!! Oooops.
23. My strangest delivery (I was a student midwife) was dealing with a concealed pregnancy where no one in the family knew the girl was pregnant. The girl had gone to A&E with her mum after telling her that she had twisted/broken her ankle but she was actually in labour. The whole time in the delivery room, the girl was in denial and her mother was crying. It was by far the strangest and most awkward experience of my life.
