I had an alcoholic 82yo male pt with severe constipation. He was irritable because he didn’t have a drink or a cigarette. He pressed the call light and I came in his room and was greeted with, “Lady, I gotta shit.” So I put him on the BSC several times and it was unsuccessful. He kept saying, “Come on butt!” So I choose to check [...]

I used to work in the urology dept. Our job, of course, involved everything that had to do with to your most private parts, including vasectomies. One day, one of the biomedical techs came around asking for the semen ultrasound so she could inspect it. I politely told her that we didn’t have a semen ultrasound, the semen samples were turned over to lab for [...]

I once had an extremely pleasant, elderly and entirely confused patient (Alert and Oriented x1). She was very quiet and polite always-saying thank you and please. She was a storybook grandmother. Well, the order rolled in to place a foley. Being that she was so sweet and kind I elicited the help of some techs and another RN to make it go smoothly. We put [...]

While doing clinicals, I cared for a confused elderly female. I was giving her a bath and as I was cleaning her bottom, she looked to me and said, “Have you ate yet?” I smiled and politely told her that I wasn’t hungry yet.

One of my first few clinicals in nursing school, I had to give a bath to an obese woman. Well the professors always told us if they are big and have overlapping skin that you got to lift it up and clean under the skin. This woman was really big, so I went to lean her forward so I could clean her back, and I [...]

I was pulled to a palliative care unit one night and my patient was a 92 year old male coming to the end of his life. He went for the call bell and when I answered blurted out, “Excuse my French ma’am but could you come powder my balls!?! I can’t reach them and they are sticking together!” I went into his room to see [...]

I have been working at a Nursing Home for over a year as a nursing assistant waiting to get into nursing school. One night I was getting ready to give a resident a bath. She is a mechanical lift transfer and so I was using a bath sling which has a big hole in the center to clean the butt. We raised her up about [...]

As a young nursing student I had a clinical in the nursing home. One day my confused and forgetful client wanted a shower…I grabbed another student and we set about completing the task. We sat her in a PVC pipe chair with the hole in the middle and proceeded to soap her up. This shower had a detachable nozzle so as to get to those [...]

I work on a cardiac floor, where the majority of the patients are on cardiac monitors. Occasionally we have off-service patients, and consequently off-service doctors. I was caring for a trauma patient with an abdominal bleed that was requiring numerous dressing changes. I notified the off-service physicians, and asked that they come and evaluate the patient and the wound. The resident and a med-student come [...]

I had a patient that was going for surgery. He was 18. He was NPO for surgery so I asked him if he knew what that meant. He said “Sure do: Now Pissed Off!” I thought that was pretty clever and I’ve used that time and time again!