Dreaming about work

[CNL2B]

I had one of those completely bizarre, abstract dreams last night but during it's course, I woke up and it was very clear to me that it was about work.

I was working at a hospital (not my hospital) with some of my real coworkers. The hospital was eerily quiet and everywhere I went, I ran into other hospital staffers (the information desk, the ward clerks, the executive walking down the hallway, the tech wheeling a gurney, etc.) and they were ALL CLOWNS, and not the happy ones -- they were the sad, angry ones with runny makeup and devilish smiles. No kidding.

It gets better -- I figure out that my place of work is some sort of hospital/amusement park combination. I walk out to go home and get on a roller coaster to leave -- apparently this is how you get home from the place. So, I take a very scary roller coaster ride and guess what? Finish up right where I started, back at the hospital. It was only then that I remembered that roller coasters do that and that there clearly is no way out of this place.

I wake up feeling rather anxious at 3:30 AM.

Profound, or just weird?

[netglow, ASN, RN]

CNL2B

Clown dreams can never be good.

[dorisc1981]

Sounds like a movie I will pay money to see. It reminds me of the joker in that nurse uniform. Don't know maybe that dream is telling you that your job is a hell hole (kidding).

[loriangel14, RN]

That's pretty funny. I have gone home after a busy night and heard call bells all night in my sleep.Shortly after I started by current job, which is my first out of school,I had a dream about trying to do my computer charting.I kept coming across screens that i didn't know what it information it wanted. I spent the whole dream frowning at the computer screen saying"what are they talking about?". I work on a floor that has some rehab pts so we get families to bring in clothes so they can get properly dressed each day. I have had dreams where each room had a very large, very old wooden dresser and i spent the entire dream rummaging through dressers trying to find clothes for people.

When someone says they have the job of their dreams, i don't think this was what they had in mind.

[NocturneRN]

Sounds like an interesting, if disturbing, dream.

I generally dream about work when I'm sleeping prior to going in (I work nights). Most of the time, the dream is the same theme except for a few details: I'm aware that I'm in bed trying to sleep, but at the same time I've been assigned to care for a patient while I'm sleeping. I keep waking up, glancing at the clock, and thinking, "It's already 9 pm, and I haven't even looked at the patient yet!" or "I was supposed to start that IV and give pain medication, but I keep falling asleep. Am I going to get fired for not doing my job?"

When the alarm finally goes off, I usually wake up filled with guilt about neglecting that patient. And it's usually a good five minutes before I realize that (1) there is no patient, and (2) no one is going to give me a patient assignment when I'm not even at work. ;>)

I chalk it up to having an overdeveloped sense of responsibility----aren't all nurses taught to take on huge responsibilities, even if they have no control over the situation?

[TipitiwichitRN]

I have had some dreams of work, too.... along the lines of these already mentioned. But0 what gets me is the Call bells in my head!!

I get home and can literally still hear the call bells ringing. Sometimes it is the quickly- paced sound from the bathrooms, but mostly those are interjecting the room call bells. I am full on still awake when this happens.

I am really tired though! I work nights, and go to sleep within an hour. The sounds are there untill I fall asleep!

beep beep beep beep!

Thanks for sharing!

[SweetLikeSugar]

Are you sure you were dreaming? That sounds alot like where I work. Minus the roller coaster ride home. LOL

Work dreams are the worst!! I have this recurring dream where no matter what I do, I just can't catch up. I'm behind on meds, dressings, assessments and charting that no matter what I do, I can't keep up. I'll wake up in such a panic! Recently, I gave my son a dose of Tylenol (in real life) and I woke up in a panic because I forgot to chart it.

[tokebi]

What a dream! Psychoanalysts would have a field day with that one! Although... it probably doesn't take a psychoanalyst to know the meanings of those images.

I think your dream should be made into a short film. It will be such a bizarre and haunting one. I actually felt a chill when you got on the roller coaster because I knew where you were going to end up!

[TDCHIM]

I think dreams like that happen anytime you're in a stressful job. About eight years ago, when I was still working as a reporter, I was going through a particularly stressful time at work. I had this terrible dream where I was sitting at my desk, trying to write a story, but the screen kept growing taller and wider. I had to write more and more and more to fill up the screen. My boss kept calling me and yelling that I clearly wasn't working, I had barely written anything, and I was going to miss deadline and be fired. Eventually I was surrounded by this huge screen - it had expanded so much it was as though I was sitting in the eye of a tornado of words. It was pressing in on me sort of like the garbage compressor in Star Wars IV when I woke up in a cold sweat.

I agree that dreams with clowns in them are particularly creepy! Maybe a short relaxation routine before you settle in to sleep would help.

[MinnieMomRN]

I hate work dreams! When I dream of work, it's the old I'm giving report at end of shift when I realize that I had an additional patient that I never knew I had. Wake up in a cold sweat thinking OMG!!! I never even SAW this person!

[iNurseUK, RN]

Slightly off-topic but striking enough to be worth repeating we recently had a patient of ours whose wife came to us crying and asking to talk to the nurse looking after her husband.

I took her into the room we have set aside for these things and she told me that she had dreamed of her husband wanting to buy a new house. He loved the house she told us and was insisting that they buy it but she hated the house.

I asked her why she hated the house in her dream and, very distressed,she cried "Nurse, it had no doors or windows. He will die"

I tried to reassure her as her husband was an active treatment chemotherapy patient with a reasonably good prognosis that we were certainly not expecting to die.

The very next night he threw a huge PE and died to the total shock of the ward.

"A house with no doors or windows"...a coffin?

Creepy.

[earthcrosser]

Mine come from the nights where it seems like I'm doing absolutely nothing but feed after feed after feed. I'll just dream about feeding babies endlessly until I randomly wake up, see my little kitten and wonder where his NG tube is because I need to feed him.

Yeah...I don't like work dreams.