To ask if nurses have no sense of smell?

[Cinders29]

Right so my son is hospital with suspected gastroenteritis ( has been tested for covid ) and his diarrhoea has been extreme. We are in a side room and when nurses enter the room after he's had a bowel movement I apologise for the smell. Every.single.time they've replied with 'oh don't worry I have no sense of smell' surely every nurse in this hospital has no sense of smell 🤣 or is this part of their etiquette that they just say this , to make patients feel better ??

We have a sense of smell but get used to it. We wouldn’t say anything as that’s unprofessional! Faecal breath is probably the worst smell I’ve ever encountered.

Obviously she's just being polite.

I am a nurse and am very good at pretending I haven't noticed. Actually I have a very sensitive sense of smell, poor me .

I'm not a nurse, i work in a hospital lab surrounded by solvents and human tissue plus associated bits. When people come and visit they always ask what the smell is, be it chemicals, blood, or faeces (although occasionally there are some that we can tell) and we always look blank, we're so used to them we don't even register.

You definitely get used to almost all the smells but agree with a pp that gangrene is something else, 5 years on a vascular ward and still makes me heave unfortunately.

Thanks everyone.

The doctor on the other hand, came in and opened up the bin to dispose of apron and gloves and said 'yes I can smell it now, very infectious stools ' he then made me junior doctor take off his mask and smell the bin so that he was familiar with the smell. I gagged for him, but he was again, extremely professional, he just nodded.

NHS staff = saints 😇

I'm a nurse, I think we get use to it, we seriously dnt take much notice of the smell at all.

Doing it day in day out and numerous times throughout the shift you honestly get immune to it some kind of way.

Hope everything goes well xx

Yep, politeness. I’ve found gangrene to be the worst, blank face while concentrating on little breaths through the mouth. The fact is all this stuff is worse for a patient, we just have to put up with the smell, they have to put up with symptoms/adverse outcomes.

Another Nurse here, you know what to expect, so are prepared. I worked for ages on Colorectal surgical ward. New Colostomies are quite the stinkers, the poor patients are the ones heaving, I used to make sure to have a vomit bowl handy just in case. Vicks is your friend. A little swipe under your nose and you can't smell much else. Very handy when the whole nursing home I work at(dementia care and no sense of don't touch or hold hands) had norovirus a couple of moths ago.

I do have a sense of smell but it just doesn’t bother me. I have never retched at work not even when I had awful morning sickness.

You get used to strong smells TBH x

Im a dr but I just turn my nose off. You sort of know somethings smells unpleasant but it honestly doesnt bother me.

Sometimes people will say if we drain a massive abscess or something how much it smells (normally the patient) and Ill say does it? Once someone draws my attention to it Ill notice but its just a bad smell 🤷🏼‍♀️

We used essential oils, and put a drop inside our mask for really bad smells. (non-toxic ones obviously).

Worse smell was a man who had been bitten by a spider in Australia, and developed a fungating, flesh eating wound on his abdomen. I left the department for lunch and when I returned, as soon as the lift doors opened, the stench hit me!!! The entire department stank. I felt so sorry for the man, but like most people with a chronic, ongoing wound (leg ulcers etc) he was no longer able to smell it himself!

Dont worry about it OP she's probably just got coronavirus.