Nursing Duties: Cleaning Up
Registered nurses clean poop as part of their job. It’s an important part of patient care. For example, ICU and emergency nurses may deal with it more often. Although not glamorous, cleaning poop maintains patient hygiene and dignity. They work as a team with nursing assistants for patient comfort. Considering the compassionate care nurses provide, cleaning poop is a small part of their responsibilities. Nursing entails far more than that, like providing medications, assisting with procedures, monitoring patients, and being a support system.
Are Nurses Required to Clean Patients?
Cleaning poop is definitely a part of a nurse’s job. While some prefer careers with less mess, like nurse educator or researcher, most nurses handle poop professionally. It’s not the most glamorous part of the job, but it is an important part of providing patient care.
Nursing School and Specialties
In nursing school, you’re going to be in the thick of it. After you graduate, you can pick a job in a field that will not have to deal with bodily fluids often. For instance, as an OR nurse, exposure to such tasks might be less frequent.
Nursing Assistants and Patient Hygiene
Nursing assistants help patients go poop, they clean up poop, and they even help stop poop. As a CNA, you will assist patients who need to use the bathroom and other times, when patients aren’t able to walk, you will help them use bedpans.
Cleaning Procedures for Nurses
Pardon me for being a student nurse. But can someone please tell me how to clean up poop in a thorough manner. Do you use disposable dry wipes + incontinence lotion OR do you use washcloths and throw them in the hamper to be washed? Also, do you usually clean the sheets every time a patient poops? And give them a new gown?
Frequency of Bowel Movements
How often should you poop? There is no one-size-fits-all answer for how often you should poop. As a general rule of thumb, going about three days without using the bathroom qualifies as constipation.