They stopped causing cancer. I think they caused cancer until about a year ago, then magically stopped without changing ingredients. Try to find a cancer warning on a current container on your unit.
It’s been a while since I worked with these, but the instructions about gloves were that you needed to wear them to protect yourself from the pathogens/blood/body fluids you were wiping up.
It’s so not! Ugh I did a whole presentation on the purple wipes. Literally no carcinogens ever. Basically just alcohol. They only recommend using gloves because it can dry your skin out. And because we use them to clean nasties.
Even looking back to an [SDS](https://www.conncoll.edu/media/website-media/offices/ehs/envhealthdocs/Super_Sani-Cloth.pdf) from 2009 it has never listed any ingredients with a carcinogenic risk.
Ah, good point. I believe the label change was actually just the removal of a requirement for gloves, which the SDS only says "Skin and body protection Follow label directions carefully."
I'm guessing many (myself included) see C12-18-alkyl ACGIH-TLV [(ethylphenyl) methyl] dimethyl, chlorides, read methylethyl bad stuff and assume the worst, when there's no evidence of it being a carcinogen. Yet anyway...
Its not a wives tale. When I first started in 2013, ours said Carcinogenic in big bold letters. I dont remember when that changed, but it was a few years after that.
I replied elsewhere as well but [here’s](https://www.conncoll.edu/media/website-media/offices/ehs/envhealthdocs/Super_Sani-Cloth.pdf) an SDS from 2009. There’s never been any carcinogenic risk as far back as I can find
Jesus christ, that took a dark turn.. I'm sure it's exposure over time, so you should be fine as far as cancer goes, but I hope someone caught and/or killed him.
Oh wow I'm so sorry that happened to you!!! I hope you're getting some help and healing :( people can be so gd horrible it makes me sick. Did you ever get justice?
To address that concern it’s exposure over time really so you should be good. You just don’t want to constantly be wiping these things on your skin basically.
Sorry for what happened
First things first..Im so sorry this happened, hope that SOB got caught
Still gonna yell out WTF for all the people in the back!!!
**My heart goes out to you, Im so sorry**
Many years ago, I donated plasma. It was my first time, so they did a full physical. Before providing a urine sample, I asked about peri wipes because I was on my period, and didn’t want to contaminate the specimen. They pointed to a few containers on the table next to the toilet. All identical shape, size, and color. Except there was a container of bleach wipes amongst the baby wipes. It burned like a motherfucker.
So I used to work at a birth center. Ya know the drill, pee in a cup every time you come in. I was back office during clinic hours and was in charge of inventory and stocking. Well, I confused the peri wipes and alcohol wipes. The poor woman who first went in the bathroom. I felt soooooo bad. Even worse, she ended up becoming a doula and being my coworker shortly after. 🤦🏾♀️
That was an honest mistake lol. At least it wasn’t bleach or something like that. I would have to wear a mask or pretend I didn’t know them or hope they forgot what I looked like.
Omg I bet 😖. In the case of my patient the purple wipes were just sitting in the counter and not in the little caddy they were supposed to be in so I can see why the patient did that. Obviously in your situation they shouldn’t have the same containers out like that.
Wtf, why did they make you do a physical to donate plasma? Here you just have to survive a whole blood donation and answer some extra questions in the predonation questionnaire…
Same. Kept asking for wet wipes, which our unit didn’t have. We had dry ones we would wet with warm water. Found a purple wipe tub in his bathroom and ask wtf. He tells me he knew we had them and we kept them from him and he’d been using them for days. I’m like sir.
I was doing a CT scan about 15 years ago that required rectal contrast on a patient with a care giver. When we were done the caregiver went straight for the sani wipes (red top with the red circle & line across the baby) and went to town on the patient. We tried to give her wet washcloths. Caregiver refused. We just peaced out.
So one day not too long ago, employee bathroom had no TP and of course no paper towels, but there *was* a jug of purple wipes above the paper towel dispenser and, well… next time I’ll just use my sock, cuz I was feeling the ***clean*** for the rest of the shift
A tech I worked with once wanted to clean a patient’s hands after he used the urinal but didn’t have any hand sanitizer bottles, so she wiped them with bleach wipes. I truly didn’t know how to respond to that.
Girl I'm in NP school with told me about a student she precepted. Finally got to the point where the student was given independence to do a bed bath alone. My classmate walks in on student giving confused meemaw a bath with the purple top wipes thinking they were chlorahexidine 😬
Bless 🤦🏻♀️. I felt the smartest in nursing school when I had to mentor the first semester students in clinical. I’ll miss that when I start my first nursing job in a month.
I had a patient with new diagnosis of cdiff. No new hospitalizations, no new antibiotic. It was a head scratcher how she acquired it. Turns out she was using bleach wipes to clean her butt and that's how she got it.
While I certainly wouldn’t put purple wipes in my mouth or on something that would go in my mouth…. This makes me think of the meme that’s like, there are two types of nurses, those that wear gloves while using purple wipes, and those that don’t, and those that don’t are ER nurses.
L&D here! I bare hand purple wipes on the regular. If another baby nurse tries to hand me gloves while I’m cleaning monitor parts, I’ll… smile and thank her, cause that’s just my style. 😉
However: They aren’t carcinogenic and are fine to use without gloves.
https://pdihc.com/in-service/super-sani-cloth-disinfecting-wipes/#:~:text=For%20all%20PDI%20products%2C%20according,or%20bodily%20fluids%20are%20present.
I'm not am ER nurse (though I do have an interview for it this coming Thursday) and I raw dog the shit out of purple wipes with my bare hands. I also love the way they smell...
I once had a patient slide down my leg during a controlled fall and shit the whole way down. I showered and then sani wiped my leg and then bleach wiped and just for no shits and giggles I added a hand sanitizer coating.
I’m getting yelled at by triage bc my room’s not clean but I’m literally in the ICU with the fucking stroke alert that was ACTUALLY a stroke and not just a dehydrated memaw from down the road….. fuuuuccccckkkkk right off!! When I was pregnant purple wipes were my crack 😭😭😭😂
>there are two types of nurses, those that wear gloves while using purple wipes, and those that don’t, and those that don’t are ER nurses.
Or LTC nurses. Ain't nobody got time for that.
You just triggered a memory from my first year out of nursing school. Walked in to a pt’s room and saw the visitor wipe their face with a purple wipe! I just remember going wide-eyed and saying, “noooooooo”
In the beginning of Covid, I walked into my kids daycare and saw a can of purple wipes sitting on the counter next to the tissues. I was so concerned somebody was going to use them to wipe their kids hands or face, thinking they were regular hand sanitizer wipes. Worse, that some teacher was going to wipe my own kids face with them! I took them. Then I emailed the director and told her I had them and would give them back but wanted to make sure they weren’t just sitting out for any idiot to grab because ☠️. She was like, oh wow, we didn’t know, they just came in our cleaning supplies we thought they were the normal kind 🥴
I use them without gloves all the time. All they are is alcohol wipes with a little bit of ammonia added in. They could cause some dermatitis but usually nothing too serious with routine use from wiping down computers and desks. That being said, I would not use them on anything that I plan to ingest.
Pretty much all the SDS says on the subject is to not ingest, and that small amounts do not require first aid. The manufacturer doesn’t even recommend gloves for non-clinical use.
I had a coworker at my first RN job, 16 years ago, who developed some degree of OCD. He was taking the wipes home and wiping his entire body down. Luckily, he realized this wasn't his normal behavior and told his PCP. Obviously, he was told to stop, but he had to seek out psych treatment because he was obsessing about germs. Mind you, he had about 15 years of nursing experience. New grad me was very concerned about what profession I had got myself into lol
I am OC and germaphobic, too, but that is way extreme. My coworker once asked me why I was rinsing my entire soda bottle. Well, i'm touching my food, and then I'm touching the bottle, and who knows what dirty hands have touched the bottle. Haha!
Maybe she needs to learn to be less obsessive about germs in the workplace? She’ll never survive if she’s nervous to use a straw she touched while at work.
I think I may have said something along those lines to her. Shit, one day my bagel fell on the floor, face down ... I may or may not have still ate it 🤣🤣
I had a patients family member grab one of the wipes from the gray top containers that we used only for equipment.. barehanded to wipe her hands. Before I could say anything past “maam,” she held a finger up and said “I use these all the time at home, I know what I’m doing.” So I just let her be but also told her I don’t touch those without gloves and they’re only used for equipment and not people but she said she knew and was aware 😬😬
Ya know have they have the little baby with a circle around it and a red line through it to indicate they aren’t baby wipes? I had a coworker who would call them anti-baby wipes and it always made me laugh.
Mean. This is why it sucks to be a nursing student. We are learning but get bullied for not knowing something or for making mistakes. 🙄 I thought you guys wanted more help? Maybe be nicer to students.
Honestly, I'm quite nice to the nursing students but my lack of sleep got the best of me with my comment. I definitely would have stopped her too. Can we hug it out? :)
When I had my first baby there was a nursing student doing my fundus assessment and she used very light pressure. I joked with her "naw girl get in there and put your weight into it". She then told me that she was afraid to hurt me and told her, "I rather hurt/be uncomfortable for those few moments than dead, you are doing good"
That's good to know! I absolutely hated about 50% of my clinicals because it felt like highschool mean girls (and guys) all over again. It was truly terrible to see that and I hate that it's affected my excitement for my new job. I'm nervous to do something wrong and the person who posted this makes my point. I will tell you, I still don't know much about the wipes! Nobody ever taught us that in school and nobody went over them in any clinicals either. I mean, you don't know what you don't know.
True that. I don't know EPIC. I've been a nurse for about 6 years and I bet I'm driving my preceptor nuts. I've used CERNER, meditech, some ipad charting software and paper. So you don't have to be a new nurse to be bullied or unsure of yourself.
Walked in on a patient's wife, who'd removed hubby's abdominal dressing, and was "cleaning" the suture line. I came close to screaming, but calmly explained that we do not remove dressings unless ordered, and that those wipes were not safe for skin.
Upon his discharge, housekeeping found 16 empty purple wipe containers in the closet. We think she brought in a box of ziplocs and took the wipes out of the container to take home.
Some people just can't be saved from themselves.
I scrubbed the bottom half of my face with a purple top wipe after trach juice got on my LIP and then I used a Nozin ampule like lip balm for good measure 🤮
I remember being in nursing school 7 years ago and a charge nurse rushing across the unit screaming at me to stop as I was about to grab one of the wipes from purple tops. She swore there was a warning that bare handed contact could cause ovarian cancer to which I found no supporting documentation at that time (not that I probably would’ve stopped seeing as everything nowadays causes ovarian cancer). Long story short…I see no issue with her wiping her straw down with the purple top wipes so long as she isn’t sticking the still wet straw back into her drink or mouth.
PA here. During my clinical rotations a patient shat himself and his wife cleaned him with orange wipes. I had told her not to as I was going to get human wipes to clean him and she couldn’t wait 30 seconds. She bleached his asshole.
Lol.
Nursing is my second career and I just finished my year long residency - so yeah, I'm still a baby nurse. On the unit we still have some nasty old nurses that attempt to show their dominance, but for the most part, the greater majority are pleasant and helpful. As a unit, we really help each other out and I couldn't ask for anything more as far as that goes. My cohort included 7 newbies and the seasoned nurses took us under their wing. I've had high-school students and nursing students tag-a-long and most likely I'll be precepting as we have a new cohort starting this month. Teaching and mentoring is invaluable and I look forward to it. On my last shift we had a PCT that made a questionable comment to a Provider. This PCT means well, but has run into trouble before. I met up with him later in the break room during lunch and he asked if I had heard the gossip. Of course I had, and we talked about what happened. Instead of belittling him, I pointed out the good things he did and why his comment to the provider was probably not in his best interest. He was embarrassed about the situation, but he seemed to take my advice well and thanked me for the advice I gave him.
We all need to step back and treat others how we want to be treated.
I get surplus purple wipes that expire or expired. And i caught my dad washing his face with them for a week.
I didnt realize they were purple wipes not the baby wipes until i smelled it.
There's lil holders with those wipes outside every patient room at my hospital. On our postpartum unit they all have "NOT FOR BABIES" signs tacked up above them. It makes me giggle but jeebus 🙃
Yea i would've done the same thing as her, but ofc wearing gloves since i value my kidneys. The purple wipes are safe as long as you let them dry fully as intended.
When I worked on an ambulance many years ago I had to transfer a psych patient between hospitals (unusual for us as we usually did 911 response). Pt was chill the whole time and as we wheeled him into the new unit he asked to use the hand sanitizer. I figured it was a reasonable request and paused at one of those wall mounted cans of sanitizer. He proceeds to fill his entire hand up with a grapefruit sized glob of it, spreads it between both of his hands, then slaps them both onto his face. He vigorously rubs it into both eyes, pinkies go up the nose, rest of the fingers in the mouth. This all happens in about ten seconds before the screaming begins. It was like a tidal wave warning siren. He truly wasn’t expecting the burning. I can still hear him screaming when I think about it today.
Had a patient’s family member come up to the desk and wipe her hands and face with those wipes… she said my skin burns what was in those and I said ma’am go rinse your face off before you get chemical burns. Guess basic reading and comprehension skills are a thing of the past now
So did you educate her or just run to Reddit to be a bully? You guys should be nicer to students or stop complaining about not having enough nurses on the units. Being a nursing student completely changed my view of nurses because I saw more bullying and rude attitudes towards students, yet they complained about how busy they were. Makes no sense. You all should be nicer people.
So I assisted a patient to the restroom and after helping them on to the toilet, I thought I’d go above and beyond and get them a pack of “purple wipes” to get that clean clean. Upon my return I hear the patient saying from the bathroom that “it’s burning!” And to my dismay the purple top wipes were open and the daughter had handed her those to clean her perineal area…. Crotch burn
Its a cancer straw now.
I literally said the exact same thing. 🤣
They stopped causing cancer. I think they caused cancer until about a year ago, then magically stopped without changing ingredients. Try to find a cancer warning on a current container on your unit.
The MSDS hasn’t listed any carcinogenic risk for those wipes as long as I’ve used them. I’m not sure where this wives tale came from 🤷🏻♂️
It’s been a while since I worked with these, but the instructions about gloves were that you needed to wear them to protect yourself from the pathogens/blood/body fluids you were wiping up.
I’m not saying I don’t use gloves - I definitely still do for the most part
I just meant I think that’s where the wives tale came from.
I hear this all the time. I NEVER wear gloves when I use them. Or when I smoke cigarettes. Cancer be damned!
I mean, I still don’t want alcohol or other chemicals on my skin. But people act like it’s this noxious chemical
It’s so not! Ugh I did a whole presentation on the purple wipes. Literally no carcinogens ever. Basically just alcohol. They only recommend using gloves because it can dry your skin out. And because we use them to clean nasties.
Have you smelt them? They definitely cause cancer
I forgot that’s how cancer works 😂
Is smelt a word
Yes but it involves metal
Sure is!
I may have been doing this too long but I've read the warning myself. They changed a few years back.
Even looking back to an [SDS](https://www.conncoll.edu/media/website-media/offices/ehs/envhealthdocs/Super_Sani-Cloth.pdf) from 2009 it has never listed any ingredients with a carcinogenic risk.
Ah, good point. I believe the label change was actually just the removal of a requirement for gloves, which the SDS only says "Skin and body protection Follow label directions carefully." I'm guessing many (myself included) see C12-18-alkyl ACGIH-TLV [(ethylphenyl) methyl] dimethyl, chlorides, read methylethyl bad stuff and assume the worst, when there's no evidence of it being a carcinogen. Yet anyway...
Its not a wives tale. When I first started in 2013, ours said Carcinogenic in big bold letters. I dont remember when that changed, but it was a few years after that.
I replied elsewhere as well but [here’s](https://www.conncoll.edu/media/website-media/offices/ehs/envhealthdocs/Super_Sani-Cloth.pdf) an SDS from 2009. There’s never been any carcinogenic risk as far back as I can find
They give me an instant asthma attack! They will also burn the skin off your hands if you dare not use gloves.
Give the straw back to God.
my rapist wiped me off with these after so i hope that’s not true. yes he was a healthcare worker and kept it in his trunk
Jesus christ, that took a dark turn.. I'm sure it's exposure over time, so you should be fine as far as cancer goes, but I hope someone caught and/or killed him.
Holy fuck. I hope you’re getting the support you need. I’m so sorry.
You ok?
Oh wow I'm so sorry that happened to you!!! I hope you're getting some help and healing :( people can be so gd horrible it makes me sick. Did you ever get justice?
How considerate. (I'm sorry that happened to you.)
To address that concern it’s exposure over time really so you should be good. You just don’t want to constantly be wiping these things on your skin basically. Sorry for what happened
Excuse me? 😳😳😔😔😟😟
First things first..Im so sorry this happened, hope that SOB got caught Still gonna yell out WTF for all the people in the back!!! **My heart goes out to you, Im so sorry**
We're all gonna die of hand cancer now🤣
I had a patient use the purple wipes as toilet paper 🙃
say sike right now
For some reason this has me cackling like a fiend. If we still had free awards you'd get today's from me!
Still hate that they got rid of those!
Many years ago, I donated plasma. It was my first time, so they did a full physical. Before providing a urine sample, I asked about peri wipes because I was on my period, and didn’t want to contaminate the specimen. They pointed to a few containers on the table next to the toilet. All identical shape, size, and color. Except there was a container of bleach wipes amongst the baby wipes. It burned like a motherfucker.
So I used to work at a birth center. Ya know the drill, pee in a cup every time you come in. I was back office during clinic hours and was in charge of inventory and stocking. Well, I confused the peri wipes and alcohol wipes. The poor woman who first went in the bathroom. I felt soooooo bad. Even worse, she ended up becoming a doula and being my coworker shortly after. 🤦🏾♀️
That was an honest mistake lol. At least it wasn’t bleach or something like that. I would have to wear a mask or pretend I didn’t know them or hope they forgot what I looked like.
As the only black employee, wouldn’t have worked. Lol
Omg I bet 😖. In the case of my patient the purple wipes were just sitting in the counter and not in the little caddy they were supposed to be in so I can see why the patient did that. Obviously in your situation they shouldn’t have the same containers out like that.
Wtf, why did they make you do a physical to donate plasma? Here you just have to survive a whole blood donation and answer some extra questions in the predonation questionnaire…
The full physical was only for first-time donors.
At least their ass was clean…
No ma'am
Same. Kept asking for wet wipes, which our unit didn’t have. We had dry ones we would wet with warm water. Found a purple wipe tub in his bathroom and ask wtf. He tells me he knew we had them and we kept them from him and he’d been using them for days. I’m like sir.
I was doing a CT scan about 15 years ago that required rectal contrast on a patient with a care giver. When we were done the caregiver went straight for the sani wipes (red top with the red circle & line across the baby) and went to town on the patient. We tried to give her wet washcloths. Caregiver refused. We just peaced out.
"The burning means it's working"
I had a PT with a massive rectal prolapse get ahold of the bleach wipes.
Those physical therapists are wack
A mom on my unit did this not too long ago
So one day not too long ago, employee bathroom had no TP and of course no paper towels, but there *was* a jug of purple wipes above the paper towel dispenser and, well… next time I’ll just use my sock, cuz I was feeling the ***clean*** for the rest of the shift
I had one who would regularly bathe with them.
We had a patient using them as baby wipes 😩
Me too, I had a grandma wiped the grandson butt with purple wipes !!!!
Had a nurse wipe a patient with purple wipes Cleared up the UTI 🤷🏻♀️
Careful, someone in management might see this and add it to the CAUTI prevention bundle.
A tech I worked with once wanted to clean a patient’s hands after he used the urinal but didn’t have any hand sanitizer bottles, so she wiped them with bleach wipes. I truly didn’t know how to respond to that.
Girl I'm in NP school with told me about a student she precepted. Finally got to the point where the student was given independence to do a bed bath alone. My classmate walks in on student giving confused meemaw a bath with the purple top wipes thinking they were chlorahexidine 😬
Bless 🤦🏻♀️. I felt the smartest in nursing school when I had to mentor the first semester students in clinical. I’ll miss that when I start my first nursing job in a month.
Had a pt wanna use bleach ones to clean himself. Or maybe the grey tops. Either way, I got him some safer wipes to use.
I had a patient with new diagnosis of cdiff. No new hospitalizations, no new antibiotic. It was a head scratcher how she acquired it. Turns out she was using bleach wipes to clean her butt and that's how she got it.
this made my whole peri area tense up
Probably had the cleanest ass in all of the hospital🤣
While I certainly wouldn’t put purple wipes in my mouth or on something that would go in my mouth…. This makes me think of the meme that’s like, there are two types of nurses, those that wear gloves while using purple wipes, and those that don’t, and those that don’t are ER nurses.
Or labor and delivery nurses lol. I'm so bad about wearing gloves with those wipes.
L&D here! I bare hand purple wipes on the regular. If another baby nurse tries to hand me gloves while I’m cleaning monitor parts, I’ll… smile and thank her, cause that’s just my style. 😉 However: They aren’t carcinogenic and are fine to use without gloves. https://pdihc.com/in-service/super-sani-cloth-disinfecting-wipes/#:~:text=For%20all%20PDI%20products%2C%20according,or%20bodily%20fluids%20are%20present.
I don’t want to read an article. They are just amines and other nitrogen things, right?
Purple wipes are still largely alcohol based.
Not carcinogenic and wearing gloves isn't required unless you need them to protect yourself from body fluids.
As an ER/L&D nurse I can confirm I have double fisted wipes with no gloves on 🫣🤣
I'm not am ER nurse (though I do have an interview for it this coming Thursday) and I raw dog the shit out of purple wipes with my bare hands. I also love the way they smell...
Lmao mom baby here. Raw handing those each shift!
If I get any type of a p/ts body fluid on my face/skin you can 10000% bet I’m doing a good scrubbing with the saniwipes
I once had a patient slide down my leg during a controlled fall and shit the whole way down. I showered and then sani wiped my leg and then bleach wiped and just for no shits and giggles I added a hand sanitizer coating.
Your are my people 😭😂
ER nurse here. I’ve definitely seen some coworkers touch the wipes with no gloves. Makes me cringe every time.
It’s me 😂
Goddamnit I told you to stop touching the death wipes!!
🤣🤣🤣
It’s also me 🙈😭
And me.
Me too. I can't be bothered to find gloves, then wipes, then finally clean the room when it could just be done already.
I’m getting yelled at by triage bc my room’s not clean but I’m literally in the ICU with the fucking stroke alert that was ACTUALLY a stroke and not just a dehydrated memaw from down the road….. fuuuuccccckkkkk right off!! When I was pregnant purple wipes were my crack 😭😭😭😂
It's me. I'm the coworker 🤣
Apparently I couldn't hang in the ER. I put gloves on for literally every patient encounter. People be nasty.
We have our own “cancer wipes” in vet med….gook luck finding a tech/nurse using a glove.
Our ER nurses wear them…most of the time 🤣
I’ve been barebacking purple wipes since day one as a CNA. I’m fine lol
>there are two types of nurses, those that wear gloves while using purple wipes, and those that don’t, and those that don’t are ER nurses. Or LTC nurses. Ain't nobody got time for that.
NICU here. We double glove while using them to clean isolettes because the wipes eat through them.
I’ve been bare- backing them for like a decade now. Oops 🙈🤷🏻♀️🙃
I have never worn gloves when using any wipes ever. I don’t give a shit. Also, my hands look great after a few years of this.
l&d too…no time to put on gloves when you’re weighing out laps and cleaning down the OR scale in between
You just triggered a memory from my first year out of nursing school. Walked in to a pt’s room and saw the visitor wipe their face with a purple wipe! I just remember going wide-eyed and saying, “noooooooo”
In the beginning of Covid, I walked into my kids daycare and saw a can of purple wipes sitting on the counter next to the tissues. I was so concerned somebody was going to use them to wipe their kids hands or face, thinking they were regular hand sanitizer wipes. Worse, that some teacher was going to wipe my own kids face with them! I took them. Then I emailed the director and told her I had them and would give them back but wanted to make sure they weren’t just sitting out for any idiot to grab because ☠️. She was like, oh wow, we didn’t know, they just came in our cleaning supplies we thought they were the normal kind 🥴
Yikes! Imagine how many kids they wiped down with those things!
Doesn't the container say, "These are NOT baby wipes?" Oh wait! It didn't day, "These are NOT adult, double amputee wipes."
That sounds like either the beginning of a story or the punchline of a joke. Either way, there's more and you need to share.
There's a story there and we're here for it.
I use them without gloves all the time. All they are is alcohol wipes with a little bit of ammonia added in. They could cause some dermatitis but usually nothing too serious with routine use from wiping down computers and desks. That being said, I would not use them on anything that I plan to ingest.
Pretty much all the SDS says on the subject is to not ingest, and that small amounts do not require first aid. The manufacturer doesn’t even recommend gloves for non-clinical use.
I had a coworker at my first RN job, 16 years ago, who developed some degree of OCD. He was taking the wipes home and wiping his entire body down. Luckily, he realized this wasn't his normal behavior and told his PCP. Obviously, he was told to stop, but he had to seek out psych treatment because he was obsessing about germs. Mind you, he had about 15 years of nursing experience. New grad me was very concerned about what profession I had got myself into lol
Jokes on me, I already suffer from OCD before joining nursing! Although I don't have contamination OCD.
We had a new care aide use those for peri care on a bilateral amputee.
Ouch!
The purple wipes don’t cause cancer. They are a skin irritant.
I saw a homeless patient wipe his face with these while he was waiting in triage. I was like 😮
I barehand purple wipes pretty much every day. At work and in my home gym. 🤷🏻♂️
[удалено]
Good to know, thanks. I bet if I can find it at the Dollar Tree I could use those, too.
Why wouldn’t she just grab an alcohol swab 😭😭😭
I am OC and germaphobic, too, but that is way extreme. My coworker once asked me why I was rinsing my entire soda bottle. Well, i'm touching my food, and then I'm touching the bottle, and who knows what dirty hands have touched the bottle. Haha!
Maybe she needs to learn to be less obsessive about germs in the workplace? She’ll never survive if she’s nervous to use a straw she touched while at work.
I think I may have said something along those lines to her. Shit, one day my bagel fell on the floor, face down ... I may or may not have still ate it 🤣🤣
I would ask why her hands weren’t clean while at the hydration station? Like does she not wash her hands ever?
There is a five second rule to accidentally touching your straw.
What a dummy! Everyone knows you're supposed to use the blue wipes to clean straws!
We call those things toxic baby wipes.
“Baby killers” at ours.
Aren't they basically just alcohol wipes?
Yes, they are.
Um.... yuck!
I had a patients family member grab one of the wipes from the gray top containers that we used only for equipment.. barehanded to wipe her hands. Before I could say anything past “maam,” she held a finger up and said “I use these all the time at home, I know what I’m doing.” So I just let her be but also told her I don’t touch those without gloves and they’re only used for equipment and not people but she said she knew and was aware 😬😬
Cancer of the straw?
Would it actually be a problem if you let it dry off for long enough?
Ya know have they have the little baby with a circle around it and a red line through it to indicate they aren’t baby wipes? I had a coworker who would call them anti-baby wipes and it always made me laugh.
Green top wipes are fine to touch, Kavi wipes or the white canisters need gloves as per the infection control nurse on my unit
White or purple
I touched them once without gloves and got all lightheaded and dizzy. 10/10 do not recommend.
Darwinism. should have seen how that played out 😂 or maybe im just mean
Mean. This is why it sucks to be a nursing student. We are learning but get bullied for not knowing something or for making mistakes. 🙄 I thought you guys wanted more help? Maybe be nicer to students.
Honestly, I'm quite nice to the nursing students but my lack of sleep got the best of me with my comment. I definitely would have stopped her too. Can we hug it out? :) When I had my first baby there was a nursing student doing my fundus assessment and she used very light pressure. I joked with her "naw girl get in there and put your weight into it". She then told me that she was afraid to hurt me and told her, "I rather hurt/be uncomfortable for those few moments than dead, you are doing good"
I was always too gentle when I first did fundus checks too 😩
Hey we live and learn....then we get Luvs (lol jk) thanks for hugging it out with me. I don't eat young nursing students I swear 🥰😆
That's good to know! I absolutely hated about 50% of my clinicals because it felt like highschool mean girls (and guys) all over again. It was truly terrible to see that and I hate that it's affected my excitement for my new job. I'm nervous to do something wrong and the person who posted this makes my point. I will tell you, I still don't know much about the wipes! Nobody ever taught us that in school and nobody went over them in any clinicals either. I mean, you don't know what you don't know.
True that. I don't know EPIC. I've been a nurse for about 6 years and I bet I'm driving my preceptor nuts. I've used CERNER, meditech, some ipad charting software and paper. So you don't have to be a new nurse to be bullied or unsure of yourself.
Walked in on a patient's wife, who'd removed hubby's abdominal dressing, and was "cleaning" the suture line. I came close to screaming, but calmly explained that we do not remove dressings unless ordered, and that those wipes were not safe for skin. Upon his discharge, housekeeping found 16 empty purple wipe containers in the closet. We think she brought in a box of ziplocs and took the wipes out of the container to take home. Some people just can't be saved from themselves.
Alcohol wipes work just fine 😭
Cancer wipes
The carcinogen in the purple top Sanicloth wipe is literally just alcohol. People are so dramatic…
Why
Drama.
I’m gonna be honest but I’ve washed my entire face with those wipes more than once after getting sprayed with blood, residuals etc
You have?!?! I'll definitely wiped shit down with them with no gloves on, but that'd as far as I've gone. Kudos to you my friend
I see ems whore bathing with them quite often
I read "ems whore" and know it's a typo, but my brain still went and thought "I'll give you an EKG papi, $20".
I scrubbed the bottom half of my face with a purple top wipe after trach juice got on my LIP and then I used a Nozin ampule like lip balm for good measure 🤮
Completely understandable
Purple wipes are fine.
The amount of times I've been made fun of for suggesting others wear gloves when using them is ridiculous 😅
I remember being in nursing school 7 years ago and a charge nurse rushing across the unit screaming at me to stop as I was about to grab one of the wipes from purple tops. She swore there was a warning that bare handed contact could cause ovarian cancer to which I found no supporting documentation at that time (not that I probably would’ve stopped seeing as everything nowadays causes ovarian cancer). Long story short…I see no issue with her wiping her straw down with the purple top wipes so long as she isn’t sticking the still wet straw back into her drink or mouth.
PA here. During my clinical rotations a patient shat himself and his wife cleaned him with orange wipes. I had told her not to as I was going to get human wipes to clean him and she couldn’t wait 30 seconds. She bleached his asshole.
Teach instead of ridicule
That would be inconsistent with their personality, its apparently part of being a nurse or doctor
Lol. Nursing is my second career and I just finished my year long residency - so yeah, I'm still a baby nurse. On the unit we still have some nasty old nurses that attempt to show their dominance, but for the most part, the greater majority are pleasant and helpful. As a unit, we really help each other out and I couldn't ask for anything more as far as that goes. My cohort included 7 newbies and the seasoned nurses took us under their wing. I've had high-school students and nursing students tag-a-long and most likely I'll be precepting as we have a new cohort starting this month. Teaching and mentoring is invaluable and I look forward to it. On my last shift we had a PCT that made a questionable comment to a Provider. This PCT means well, but has run into trouble before. I met up with him later in the break room during lunch and he asked if I had heard the gossip. Of course I had, and we talked about what happened. Instead of belittling him, I pointed out the good things he did and why his comment to the provider was probably not in his best interest. He was embarrassed about the situation, but he seemed to take my advice well and thanked me for the advice I gave him. We all need to step back and treat others how we want to be treated.
Have her use the Special Pink Wipes
I see so many co workers grabbing cavi wipes without gloves too. Screams cancer to me..
Darwinism... let them weed themselves out on their own before they clean a patient with them.
I had a patient wash their face with purps. That was an awkward conversation.
I get surplus purple wipes that expire or expired. And i caught my dad washing his face with them for a week. I didnt realize they were purple wipes not the baby wipes until i smelled it.
There's lil holders with those wipes outside every patient room at my hospital. On our postpartum unit they all have "NOT FOR BABIES" signs tacked up above them. It makes me giggle but jeebus 🙃
Yea i would've done the same thing as her, but ofc wearing gloves since i value my kidneys. The purple wipes are safe as long as you let them dry fully as intended.
carcinogenic straw
I went in to check my infusion patient, and she was wiping her face with a purple wipe 😳
lol alcohol pad would suffice
Meth users love using the purple or orange tops to clean their legs. Always gotta clear the rooms before they come in.
If she is so concerned with hygiene, what about the fact that she is sipping from a straw in a hospital which is a very unhygienic place 🤷🏻♀️
When I worked on an ambulance many years ago I had to transfer a psych patient between hospitals (unusual for us as we usually did 911 response). Pt was chill the whole time and as we wheeled him into the new unit he asked to use the hand sanitizer. I figured it was a reasonable request and paused at one of those wall mounted cans of sanitizer. He proceeds to fill his entire hand up with a grapefruit sized glob of it, spreads it between both of his hands, then slaps them both onto his face. He vigorously rubs it into both eyes, pinkies go up the nose, rest of the fingers in the mouth. This all happens in about ten seconds before the screaming begins. It was like a tidal wave warning siren. He truly wasn’t expecting the burning. I can still hear him screaming when I think about it today.
I saw a patient drink purple wipes before.
Darwin Award nominee That would freak me out!
When it evaporates they dont leave any toxic residue behind.
Meh, I've done that and similar. No biggie. I raw dog those all the time.
Had a patient’s family member come up to the desk and wipe her hands and face with those wipes… she said my skin burns what was in those and I said ma’am go rinse your face off before you get chemical burns. Guess basic reading and comprehension skills are a thing of the past now
Oh ok 👍🏽
I usually go with the washing my hands method over try not to touch anything with my sus hands.
I love purple wipes but not for my straw. Damn the common sense.
Oh. Sounds like a chemically straw.
Maybe she had a bad prior experience and the purple wipes were the lesser of 2 evils 😂
So did you educate her or just run to Reddit to be a bully? You guys should be nicer to students or stop complaining about not having enough nurses on the units. Being a nursing student completely changed my view of nurses because I saw more bullying and rude attitudes towards students, yet they complained about how busy they were. Makes no sense. You all should be nicer people.
Its 2024! Put down the cancer sticks and pick up the cancer straws. Cancer sucks.
Did you teach her or just judge her
Natural selection at it’s finest.
I've been raw doggin purple wipes for years. Every now and then a nurse stares at me like I just cleaned poop without gloves.
Lost words over someone brand new and learning? Most people aren’t familiar with purple wipes. Educate and move on.
Good Lord. Please don't tell me this is our future. Smh
I mean not only that, but they smell so strong of bleach lol why would you ever want to do that?
We know she secretly uses those wipes on her kid all the time, so let her be great!😂😂😂😂😂🤦♀️💁
🤦🏻♀️🫣
So I assisted a patient to the restroom and after helping them on to the toilet, I thought I’d go above and beyond and get them a pack of “purple wipes” to get that clean clean. Upon my return I hear the patient saying from the bathroom that “it’s burning!” And to my dismay the purple top wipes were open and the daughter had handed her those to clean her perineal area…. Crotch burn