Speechless
Feb 4th, 2008 by Terry
Just when I thought I’d “seen it all,” someone came to the rescue and proved that old line wrong once again.
I was working in the GI suite one day last week: in our room was the patient, the doctor, the nurse, the tech, and me. I had just induced the patient for the proposed procedure, a colonoscopy, with Propofol (your friend and mine). The patient was lying on his left side, facing me, with his gown open in the back.
The doctor was getting his scope ready, and I was watching the patient while charting a few vital signs, when, out of the corner of my eye, I detect the nurse getting very “busy” on our patient’s back.
“What’s going on back there?” I ask.
“Oh, I just hate blackheads.” She quite matter-of-factly replies.
“What are you DOING BACK THERE?” I repeat.
“I do this all the time!” She giggles.
“Do you know what the definition of assault and battery is?” I ask her.
“Hey,” she gets defensive, “it’s just blackheads.”
Yep, I kid you not, she was popping zits on this sleeping man. True story, I could not make this stuff up.
After she returned from her suspension, said nurse was last seen attending risk management’s remedial classes on proper conduct on the job. Eek.
LOL, but with a slightly sick feeling.
That is SO filthy! Glad there are folks like you out there keeping an eye on this stuff. Seriously!
oh! I heard the same story this summer during my anesthesia placement. The anesthesiologist told me one of the attendings during his residency was doing that. Ugh.
I was going to say something like”I can’t believe that” but I do believe it. It is hitting home this winter after the whole broken rib fiasco, that health care professionals are not all the same, and some
are in it for all the wrong reasons. I pray hard that when I have to suck on proprofol again ( with portal hypertension, at least every three years, if no varicies are found) that I am surrounded by professionals who know their stuff. Thanks for being a pro, Terry.
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I don’t like ear hair, either, but I don’t go and remove it. Gross!
Isn’t that an infection risk? Don’t we have enough of those already without making some more?
I like helping my patients stay nice and clean, but I had one guy recently who just would not shower. I tried three times and he just refused, even though he hadn’t had one in almost three months (due to stitches, etc.).
I finally got him to comply once his doc ordered it. He thanked me afterward, but I couldn’t make him do it the other three times or that’s assault. This drove some of his family members nuts, including the RN member. It was really a control issue, which did not bother me. So many things make patients feel out of control in the hospital, and this was just one thing he could control. I went out of my way to make sure it went well and wasn’t punitive.
I work with a nurse in our ICU who does this exact same behavior. It takes over 2 hours for her to bathe her patients, most of the time. She has been observed pulling out belly button lint and everything. Not one orifice they have is safe. Most patients request a different nurse after one shift with her…
there is such thing as going too far.
Yuck! Not exactly something we see on ER or Gray’s Anatomy, huh? Hopefully, the workshop covered staph infection control, etc..
Oh - My - Goodness
I thought I’d heard them all.
I don’t like stupid nurses like your colleague, but I don’t kick them while they aren’t looking. Isn’t that kind of the same thing?
MJ
Not quite sure what you mean, Mother JOnes. It was the patient’s physician who reported this nurse. I would never think of kicking someone when they weren’t looking, but I am a patient advocate. Aren’t you? Maybe you think I shouldn’t have said anything at all to her. But between you and me, she should have KNOWN BETTER.
Oh ick. I’ve been around many years, but have never, ever seen this kind of behavior (let me knock on wood). There are all kinds in every profession! I’m glad I read this AFTER I had my own screening colonoscopy.
Very intersting. You make us all aware of what “might” go on while we are under.
Put me down as thinking said nurse should be fired and license pulled.
Onehealthpro
As a potentially OCD pimple-popper, when faced with the compelling grossness that is a big gooey whitehead, I too would find it very challenging to resist.
I have found myself fighting the urge to want to pick on patients myself but I would NEVER touch a patient without their conscious consent. Some patients have terrible problems with skin issues and I am fascinated by surgery and wound care. I guess that’s why it doesn’t bother me as much as some. I find it a little harsh that she was suspended but she definitely should have been warned and had to attend an education seminar on assault and battery issues.
This nurse was suspended for doing a procedure without consent. I know that the idea of popping a zit actually being a procedure seems wild but it is. It is invasive and it has risks as everyone who has ever picked a zit and had a wound with a scab that left a scar would know.
It wasn’t the zit picking itself that was wrong it was the fact that the patient was asleep and could not consent. The moment any health care provider starts to think that the sleeping patient is no longer a person with rights they are in big trouble. Sometimes it’s just a zit popped, sometimes it’s sexual assault.
There are rules for a reason.People who break them demonstrate they have trouble with boundaries and those kind of people shouldn’t be in patient care.
That was truly gross….yuk…
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Message In a Bottle
That is pretty sick and an ugly way.
That is just hideous and horrible. Good GOD that nurse should get shot! Uggghhhh…and just when we are striving to be taken as professionals. {hanging head in shame}
It’s a source of infection…get it out!! But to classify it as ‘assault and battery’?! Thanks Mo for clarifying. I take ethics and legal this 1st summer session. I work with some squeezers though, as many of our patients are loopy during wound care and when getting their daily bath.
Well, I have to fess up to cleaning out dirty belly buttons on total care, bed bound patients. I’m sorry, I think it’s gross and unclean. No call for a dirty belly button. As far as blackheads - while I have never done it, I hope that if, God forbid, I can no longer take care of myself, someone will remove my icky blackheads, thank you.
Paaaahhhhhhleeeeeeze!!!!!! Take a vacation and renew perspective…