Sweet Dreams, Baby! Tell us about your strange dreams r/t nursing

[UM Review RN]

Nursing is nothing if not an intense occupation. Sometimes we dream about it.

I just woke up horrified to discover that I had five out of seven patients that I never got a chance to look at or assess for the entire shift!

So glad THAT's never happened in real life, but it's 0530 and there's no way I'm gonna be able to sleep.

How often do you dream about your job?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i dreamed about work a lot while i was on medical leave -- especially while i was in the hospital, getting dilaudid and phenergan iv. i dreamed i was at work, and someone's alarms kept going off and i needed to get up and fix them, but i couldn't move. (turns out they were my alarms -- hypotensive and hypoxic!)

one night years ago, when my husband was a new nurse, i woke in the middle of the night to find him kneeling on top of me to hold me down while he jammped his finger up my nose.

i threw him off me, and jumped out of bed screaming at him. turns out he was dreaming he was at work, trying to place an ng on a confused patient!

[Djuna]

When I worked in Hematology we had a run of deaths, all people under 50. I had vivid dreams for weeks that my children had died and I would have to go down to the morgue to identify their body. Horrible dreams. I eventually had to leave that job, I couldn't handle the emotional stress.

That was 10 years ago, now I seldom dream of nursing

[RNSC]

Back in the dark ages, when I was a GN waiting for my board results, I dreamt that I was walking across the nurse's station trying to get the daily lab reports. But no one would let me get there. Everyone was blocking my way. Finally I gave up and went back to charting, then I woke to the alarm. I found out later from my sister that I had slept walk right out of the house! :uhoh21: She tried everything to get me to turn around and about the time she was ready to give up I came in following her.

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

I just woke up horrified to discover that I had five out of seven patients that I never got a chance to look at or assess for the entire shift!

So glad THAT's never happened in real life, but it's 0530 and there's no way I'm gonna be able to sleep.

I've had dreams like that in which I'll be spending most of the shift trying to get to my patient's rooms or trying to get keys, and then the end of the shift rolls around and I haven't seen any of them. In other dreams, all my patients are on different floors and I can't seem to find the units they're all on. In other dreams I come to work in my underwear.

[PrivateDuty]

I actually had this dream last week. I was working in the ER and went outside the bldg to get something. I looked up and saw a big jet coming right toward me and the bldg. All of a sudden the wheels fell off the jet and I flung myself to the ground knowing it was my time to die. The plane ran right over me (but somehow missed the bldg.) I don't remember feeling any pain in the dream, but I had to crawl back into the ER and tell them I had been run over by a plane. The MD put a pt. braclet on me and said when my shift was over he would admit me for 24 hr obs. No idea where this dream came from. I haven't worked in ER for over 10 years, but it was kinda funny after I woke up and got to thinking about it. Wonder if it's b/c most nurse managers do not believe there is any excuse for an absence? Maybe that's why I haven't called in sick in the last 3 years...:selfbonk:

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

I just had that same dream. I felt horrible and anxious in the dream when I realised that somehow it was 1600 and I had just done my first assessment and hadn't even passed meds. I kept thinking to myself, "how could this have happened? What was I doing??"

I was so relieved when I woke up.

I have dreams just like this, too, only in a nightshift setting. Seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of these posts.

[sphinx, BSN, RN]

I'll have dreams that I am "helping out" at one of my former employers. Um yeah, right. I don't think so! lol!

I've had a variety of dreams, but by far the weirdest:

I dreamed I was emptying a foley, and the urine wasn't coming out, so I took the tubing and *syphoned* it out. Yeah, you know-with my mouth. Yack! Eeeuuww!:barf01:

[gentle_ben_RN, ASN]

I've had nightmares where I was awake and walking but I couldn't breathe on my own so I was put on a ventilator. Then my manager wanted me to come to work of the vent!!!

I know....it's crazy.

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

My son got discharged from the peds unit this morning. Last night I slept by him in a recliner and I kept dreaming that he was septic and all the possible reasons for it, and in my sleep I was having all these conversations with his doctors about it.

He wasn't septic, btw.

[rnin02]

I frequently dream that I am running late and can't call to tell them...either I can't find a phone, can't remember the number, something. And my other frequent dream is that I'm try to either catheterize myself or a patient (it varies) and I just can't do it. Then I will wake up and have to pee so bad!

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

When I was in nursing school, I had a dream that my daughter was sick and needed to be cathed, so I did it. We were in a hospital setting of some sort. In my dream I used a cath that was way too big of a french for a 4 yo girl and I really hurt her.

I always kind of figured that it was about me worrying all the time that school was taking too much of a toll on my family.

[MIA-RN1, RN]

I have the standard find-outabout-pt-at-end-of-shift dream a lot but recently, I've had a real run of dreams where I have twin boys and one I can care for and one I can't. Mostly the babies are born where I work and the one stays with me and the other goes to the special care nursery where he is cared for. Usually I am worried sick about both babies and torn between which one I should spend my time with..

I realized recently that it symbolizes my desire to leave my current job, and how torn I feel.

As soon as I accepted a new job, the dream stopped.