Nightmares about work?

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in ICU/CCU.

I think it's the heat, but lately I have been having terrible nightmares about work, the after-effects of which hang on my mind all day. Last night I dreamt that I was assigned patients in two separate hospitals and had to travel between them to give care. I showed up at one patient's bedside and found that the dressing on her abdominal incision (what abdominal incision???) was soaked through, and her whole bed was covered in this thick sero-sanguinous drainage. My other patient shrank to the size of an infant, and I dropped her on the floor. In the middle of this horrible dream, I remember worrying about finishing all of my CHARTING! Ugh. Another time, I had a bad dream that I hung cleaning fluid instead of normal saline.

Does anyone else have dreams like this? They seem so real when I'm having them! Truly horrible.

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Specializes in ICU.

when i'm truly exhausted and in need of some time off, i've been woken up by my husband and found myself standing over him, working......i think it's more his nightmare than mine! :lol2:

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Wow mpccrn! That scares me because although I haven't started NS yet I have been known to review A&P ALL night in my sleep and wake up feeling like I didn't sleep at all! The worst part is that I think it helped!! Guess I better warn my hubby!! :lol2:

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Specializes in Onco, palliative care, PCU, HH, hospice.

I have a recurring nightmare about work. Our unit is full the only nurses on duty are me and my charge nurse, I have to take one hall, she takes the other giving us both 12 pts a piece. So I go about assessing my patients and when I finish assessing the last one I look at the clock and it's 0630 and I realize i haven't given any of my meds for the entire night! I hate that dream!

I've found that I have this nightmare when ever I've had a really bad night at work so trust me you're not alone!

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I have work nightmares all the time! Just this past weekend, my patient coded suddenly and I was really shaken by it. That night, I had a dream about the code. I woke up at about 3am with my heart pounding in my throat and I thought I was in rapid Afib! Took quite a while to calm myself down and go back to sleep.

MedicalLPN, I often have a similar dream to yours where I forgot about a patient I was assigned to and realized I didn't give any meds that shift. Then there have been a few dreams where I thought I hung a medication like Vanco but accidentally hung potassium instead and killed my patient!

Good to know we aren't alone with our crazy bad work dreams! :chuckle

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Specializes in School Nursing.

it sure would be nice to get paid for all of those hours we "re-live" each night when we should be sleeping !

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Specializes in Day Surgery, Agency, Cath Lab, LTC/Psych.

I've dreamed that the floors in the hospital I was working in were all uneven with large hills and valleys. Trying to get out of a patients room meant climbing up the floor--it took me forever to get the work done. I woke up exhausted from it all.

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Cherry I am also a student with an A&P dream. I had a dream that I dislocated my elbow, and my A&P instructor was the Dr. He wouldn't fix it until I could give an oral presentation on which muscles and bones were being affected!!!!

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Specializes in Gerontology.

One of my worst dreams was that I lost the med cart- full of narcotics. I was actually running around my apartment looking for the cart. Even looked in the oven! That's when I realized I was having a nightmare. Still took at least 30 minutes for my heart rate to come down!

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Yep. During prereqs, I had dreams about anatomy. I would wake up reciting brain parts and when I couldn't remember one, I'd have to get up and look it up, which started the studying all night.

I thought it'd go away when I was working... wrong. I have nightmares about work all the time. Wrong med, too busy, too many patients, killing patients, coding family members, etc. I've been on the floor for 18 months and I find myself having nightmares about some of the first patients I had. I actually had a dream that one of my "favorites" died. 2 weeks later, he was admitted. I was creeped out a little. We have a lot of people who come in and stay with us for a long time (cancer unit) and I find myself dreaming about them... good and bad dreams.

I just started my new job as a public health nurse, so we'll see what kind of fun dreams I have from this.

PS: The favorite didn't die.

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Oh yeah, I almost forgot the most recent nightmare. We recently went Live with a new computer charting/order system. After the first 2 nights of it, I started having frustrating nightmares about it... where I was looking for a certain button and I couldn't find it and my patient was coding and I HAD TO FIND THE DAMN BUTTON! I woke up all ****** off.

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Specializes in telemetry, med-surg, home health, psych.

Glad to hear I am not alone !!!! I have frantic dreams on the nights before work days and can't sleep worth a darn...then on days off I sleep like a baby...Always too many pt., neglecting to do things, unable to find things, I am in chaos usually in my dreams...very unsettling to me..

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