post traumatic nurse disorder/ or sleep deprived, you choose which…
i really had a freaky situation happen to me when i first began working. i’m a nurse now, however earlier before officially starting nursing school i became a nurse assistant. now right after getting my certificate i began working at a rehab hospital and in a step down unit at a community hospital. unwittingly, i set myself up for working way too many hours of seeing things i’d not seen before (blood, feces mix --confused, multiple lines, dying or confused pts,get the picture, all of this new to me).
o.k. one night i found myself awake in my living room at home in the dark unawares (not knowing if i‘d been sleeping, just awake)…now i thought i was in the hospital (step down unit!)…looked to my right and saw the red lcd of the clock radio at the side of the living room’s sofa and thought to myself…spo2 monitor, someone’s resting, don’t’ disturb that pt!…and then went into the hallway looked in on a “patient’s room" (our guest room) and thought patient’s sleeping can’t disturb this one lol and back tracked to enter the “nurses station” (our restroom). now i just stood there and realized something was missing…maybe light, ‘cause i worked days? no! my mind told my semi - awake traumatized self o.k. if this is the nurses station, let’s see with our hands…hand to my left = toilet, hand to my middle = sink. this is not the damn hospital, and this is not saigon lol…anyway…have any of you folks suffered such awful disorienting stuff since you’ve been the nurse?!!
Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.
Oh my...if I could get the sound of beeping IV's and Tele alarms out of my head...I would sleep better! LOL! I swear I hear them all the time at home! My coffee maker makes a sound like an IV going off, cel phones ringing set me on alert..the whole bit!
Funniest yet, my cockatiel is making a sound very much like our fire alarm (at work), and I find myself looking to close doors fast before I catch myself saying "Triage..you are at home doofus!". LOL!!!!!!! All hours of the night too! Darn bird! LOL!
Another one for me is the looking at people's veins when I talk to them looking for a good IV access! LOL! Or even JVD on necks! Holly cow...someone get this stuff out of my head when I am not at work!
Somedays I do long for the nice ignorant bliss I once had before nursing! LOL!!!!!!!
Oh btw...several of my MD's are saying there will be a dx soon and comming for 'healthcare giver fatigue', and it will be covered by insurance! It is for these very things we are talking about, the susequent depressions or anxiety while we are at home and work. About time someone figured it out...we are stressed to the max!
I always have the recurring dream that I really had 7 patients instead of 6 and I go the whole day without even setting eyes on that one patient.
I also have this problem when I wake up in the mornings.. I always think my clock is wrong. I have to double check it with my cell phone and the TV.... I don't know why I get panicky about it.. its weird..
I always have the recurring dream that I really had 7 patients instead of 6 and I go the whole day without even setting eyes on that one patient.
I've had that dream. It's very similar to the school dreams I used to have where I went a month into the school year before realizing that I was supposed to be in a certain class...
haha!! i still have that dream too!! But in my dream I don't realize I have that class until Finals week.. And I have to go take a final in a class i haven't been to all semester!!
My recurrent dream is way too many patients, and it is end of shift and I am running around trying to find vital signs and I&O's for the chart. It is a really panicy feeling because I know I did the work, just can't find the documentation. (unfortunately, sometimes this is close to how it is when I am really at work!).
For the first 3 months as an aide I didn't get any restful sleep. I was hearing IV pumps and the telemetry monitors all night, with the occassional SpO2 alarm. And when those would wake me up I would think that I was in a patient's bed. All of our rooms are private but most have an extra bed, so I was sleeping in that extra bed. But then when I had my first patient die, I dreamt for 3 nights that I was either in her bed with her or in her bed after she had been taken to the morgue! Kinda had to be careful what I said to other people about these dreams/nightmares - doesn't sound good to say you were dreaming about sleeping with a patient! LOL ! I still think that "Sleeping With the Patient" would be a good book title! When I woke up from these dreams I was always panicked that someone had seen me "sleeping on the job!"
By the way, I still hear IV pumps everywhere I go. I was in Kohl's department store yesterday while they were doing inventory and using those little hand-held guns that beep on every tag. Nearly drove me nuts! I just wanted to scream at somebody to go flush the IV or change the bag!
I work in the NICU and have had many a dream about work, like not seeing a whole med kardex until the end of the shift and missing a ton of meds, dropping a baby (AAAAGH!!-more like a nightmare), having to work on an adult floor and not having a clue as to what to do, the best by far though was my dream that instead of babies in the isolettes they were all puppies!!
Missing half a semester of a class , both at my highschool and at a community college I attended many, many years ago.
Having an additional car 'lost', either having left it in another state when we moved, not knowing were a certain car was parked for months on end, or forgetting that we actually owned a car and then trying to catch up on payments, insurance and tags.
Then of course, there is the patient that no one ever gave me report on that I didn't realize was there until the end of my shift....
Still have occasional nightmare of a 3 hour medpass in LTC, not knowing anyone's name, no name bands endless hallways full of dementia patients.In one dream all my dementia patients turned into sreaming babies, in walks my DON, asks where all these babies came from and where are our patients!!!
One morning after a long stretch of night shifts, I stopped by the grocery store on my way home and was pushing the cart around the store when I realized I had done the grocery shopping several days ago and had no need to be there. I left the cart, walked out of the store, got in the car, and drove home wondering what that was all about.
I've also gotten up during the night to check patients that I thought were staying in the guest bedroom.
Recently in my dream, I was just starting my night shift, and the manager that I worked with in my first nursing job and who I liked a lot visited my facility for some kind of meeting. We said hi to each other and she told me with a very concerned face that she heard from people in my facility that I am not doing great in this job! And I asked her to give me some advice as to what to do next..
When I woke up from these dreams I was always panicked that someone had seen me "sleeping on the job!" 
Antikigirl, ASN, RN
2,595 Posts
Oh my...if I could get the sound of beeping IV's and Tele alarms out of my head...I would sleep better! LOL! I swear I hear them all the time at home! My coffee maker makes a sound like an IV going off, cel phones ringing set me on alert..the whole bit!
Funniest yet, my cockatiel is making a sound very much like our fire alarm (at work), and I find myself looking to close doors fast before I catch myself saying "Triage..you are at home doofus!". LOL!!!!!!! All hours of the night too! Darn bird! LOL!
Another one for me is the looking at people's veins when I talk to them looking for a good IV access! LOL! Or even JVD on necks! Holly cow...someone get this stuff out of my head when I am not at work!
Somedays I do long for the nice ignorant bliss I once had before nursing! LOL!!!!!!!
Oh btw...several of my MD's are saying there will be a dx soon and comming for 'healthcare giver fatigue', and it will be covered by insurance! It is for these very things we are talking about, the susequent depressions or anxiety while we are at home and work. About time someone figured it out...we are stressed to the max!