I've been noticing something lately, noticing it going on a lot recently. Maybe its just the pool of pt's coming to my specific hospital or something, IDK.
We all know pt's over react to certain (usually the wrong) things. "OMG, my mashed potatoes are cold" meanwhile their saturating is like 72% and they don't want to hear about putting their oxygen back on until you've heated up those potatoes.
On my unit, the "thing" to over react to seems to be sleep. Now, I understand having an upset sleeping schedule is disturbing beyond belief.........heck, I work nights. But lately, I've had a slew of patients who act like a bad night's sleep is going to land them in the ICU or something. Literally, they are panicked and crying as though a limb was just amputated. They want double and triple dose sleep aids until they are sleeping, regardless of the risks.
I try to tell them "Maybe its not really a medical problem at all, might just be U R not tired". I bite my tongue and thing to myself "Yeah, you lay in bed all day telling the staff to get this and do that..........so why would you be tired? I wasn't aware being waited on was such hard work that it should provide you a good nights sleep."
Last night I literally had a woman go into a full blown panic attack that almost lead to me calling the rapid response team. What stressed her so? Her blood was not done and she wanted to go to sleep........it was going to keep her up and she'd never sleep and then the world tilts on it's axis causing great shifts in the climate (or so she acted/though) and killing millions............................(tongue in cheek).
What gives with the...............poor cooping mechanisms? Seems to be a bad nights sleep just meant you didn't sleep well.
