Has anyone else "sensed" when something was wrong with a patient?

Nurses Relations

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I just want to see if anyone's had a similar experience. For background, I used to be Catholic, then agnostic, now I'm a there's-something-for-sure-but-I-have-no-idea-what-ist.

Sorry if this is sloppily written-I accidentally exposed my thyroid meds to excessive heat last week (they were in my purse when I was out in 90 degree heat all day) and ruined them like an idiot. I pick up a replacement script today, but I am not on my A-game at the moment. I'm also working in a clerical role right now, so no patient care will be compromised because I (temporarily) am!

I'm still a in nursing school, but I'm working in a supportive role at a large city hospital. There's a patient at work who I'm actually getting quite close with, which happens periodically with me. I know getting overly emotionally invested is a great way to burn out, but I'm willing to deal with it because I think it's helping me to stay motivated overall. I'm going to refer to the patient as Patient (I'm so creative!), use they/them pronouns, and not mention what their exact medical issues are to make this as HIPAA-friendly as possible.

I couldn't stop thinking about this patient all week. That's unusual. I've had cases of patients who I got very close to where I thought of them for a day or two after work, but never for a week.

I had various moments throughout the week where I just suddenly thought there's something wrong with Patient”. I sometimes woke up in the night thinking the same thing.

I came into work today (clerical role) and found out that the patient had several negative events this week. All of those events matched up perfectly with when I thought about the patient. I swear I'm telling the truth.

For example, they had something major happen at, according to the covering clinician, around 1:30am on Thursday morning. I woke up at exactly 1:26am Thursday morning with such a strong feeling of dread and there's something wrong with Patient” that I was genuinely concerned that they had coded or even passed away. That's just one example.

I don't think this is a coincidence. But I'm weirded out. I'm normally a very concrete, lineal person. One of my parents is an engineer and I definitely inherited their thinking style! Also, I am not prone to panic attacks or anxiety, and I haven't had a problem with waking up in the night since my junior year of high school. I'm also a skeptic. So this is very, very unusual for me.

I'm open to considering all ideas, and I respect all world religions (if someone asks me to pray for them, I will for example, even if I am not of faith). I just want to know if anyone has had an experience like this one. I don't want to talk about it in real life because I know people will think I'm a few bagels short of a breakfast at best and a complete liar at worst.

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

All the time. With experience, come "instincts" and I have had good ones through the years. Sometimes, it's not logical but you KNOW something is wrong or "off". Never ignore these instincts, follow through and they will most often not lead you astray.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

Yes. Young teen girl brought to us on a hold from the ER. Actually, several of us had the feeling something other than psych was wrong with this kid even though the ER doctors/nurses kept insisting she was fine. We brought our doctors in on this and they agreed she needed to go back for more tests. So we sent her back and were the recipients of a verbal smackdown from the ER attending doctor about how he was going to have all of our ***** on a platter once everything showed the kid was fine.

The scan showed a brain tumor. She was admitted to the medical unit.

While all of us were devastated at the diagnosis (she was just a kid!), we also couldn't help but hope that that attending was feeling like a real ******* right now. Especially as our doctor got a hold of this attending's superiors to let them know about his behavior.

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That gave me chills! Hopefully it wasn't a glio, but even if it was, you gave the family time to prepare and saved the girl from being blamed for her symptoms. I've heard of countless cases of young brain tumor patients being repremanded for things outside of their control, and I think that makes what may be their final months more difficult.

The thing that weirds me out the most with mine is that I was not at work. I was at home, several miles away, in my bed, when I woke up at 1:26am completely alert. Also happened again at 2:24am last night. Once more, something had happend at "around 2:20-2:30ish" this morning. We live in a weird, weird world.

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I think premonition experiences are neuroscience based and agree with theories that propose that premonition occurs because the subconscious mind knows more than the conscious mind. In my experience, premonition occurs spontaneously either when I am awake or asleep. To me, they 'feel' different than a memory or a thought because I experience increased alertness in response to premontion thoughts and this gives me a sense of 'knowing' something is wrong with a particular person. A nursing instructor described nurses intuition, as our senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling) have processed information about a person subconsciously and produce a conscious thought that something is wrong.

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Honestly, I think that sort of thing is nonsense. We all have thousands of fleeting thoughts on a daily basis. We all worry about people. Sometimes, a coincidence occurs and the coincidence stands out in our mind because it's unusual.

As for situations like Merriwhen's, I believe those are related to experience and skill.

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Specializes in Psych.

I called the dr one night at 2 am based on a gut feeling. Luckily it was the dr I have a good rapport with because there was nothing I could pinpoint what was wrong. I just kept saying, I dont like this feeling, I needs meds for him now, no he isnt doing anything, just dont like the feeling. The next day I asked the pt what was going on and he had been seeing the devil behind me (psych nurse).

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I agree with you. We are trained to take care of persons that are I'll and we use all our senses in doing that. We don't just look at patients. We see them, smell them, hear them, touch them and- get ready- our brain seems to put that into a memory file to see what these results have meant in the past. It all happens in a blink. I think that action draws from all our experiences. So yes, when you get a feeling pay attention to it. it is quite useful when taking care of my grand children .

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

In the LTC I work with a lot of Hospice patients. I've only been there since April but one morning right after I started I woke at 2:29 am. That afternoon when I went to work and in report was told that Patient X passed that morning at 2:29 am. I really didn't put much stock in it at the tiime but it's happened three more times all with patients I personally admitted or cared for.

I am not freaked uot by it but is just something I am going to track from here on out to see if it is more than coincidence.

Hppy

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.
That gave me chills! Hopefully it wasn't a glio, but even if it was, you gave the family time to prepare and saved the girl from being blamed for her symptoms. I've heard of countless cases of young brain tumor patients being repremanded for things outside of their control, and I think that makes what may be their final months more difficult.

Once she got admitted to medical, we couldn't really follow up on her since she wasn't our patient anymore. But while she was in the ER, she was technically still ours, so we were able to learn that it was a brain tumor and that the initial prognosis wasn't good. It was one of the sadder times at work for me.

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In the LTC I work with a lot of Hospice patients. I've only been there since April but one morning right after I started I woke at 2:29 am. That afternoon when I went to work and in report was told that Patient X passed that morning at 2:29 am. I really didn't put much stock in it at the tiime but it's happened three more times all with patients I personally admitted or cared for.

I am not freaked uot by it but is just something I am going to track from here on out to see if it is more than coincidence.

Hppy

hppygr8ful, how do you plan to track it to see if it is more than coincidence? When it comes to premontion, the logical side of my brain has arguments with the intuitive side of my brain, so I am always interested to know how others reconcile their thoughts with their experiences.

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I've had gut feelings about patients that they were going to go south on me without clear, objective clinical evidence that turned out to be true. But I don't think there's anything supernatural about that. I've never had a bad feeling at a certain time away from a particular person, only to learn later that something bad actually had happened.

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