Nightmares about work?

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I think it's the heat, but lately I have been having terrible nightmares about work, the after-effects of which hang on my mind all day. Last night I dreamt that I was assigned patients in two separate hospitals and had to travel between them to give care. I showed up at one patient's bedside and found that the dressing on her abdominal incision (what abdominal incision???) was soaked through, and her whole bed was covered in this thick sero-sanguinous drainage. My other patient shrank to the size of an infant, and I dropped her on the floor. In the middle of this horrible dream, I remember worrying about finishing all of my CHARTING! Ugh. Another time, I had a bad dream that I hung cleaning fluid instead of normal saline.

Does anyone else have dreams like this? They seem so real when I'm having them! Truly horrible.

Yes! I have a recurring nightmare that I did not know that a patient was assigned to me for a the whole shift, and NEVER took care of the patient the whole time! :uhoh21:

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Specializes in Nurse Manager, Med-Surg, Instructor.

What you're describing is a variation of "The Examination Dream," a dream that has been studied in people with college degrees and those without. Some dream that they're in their underwear(or less) in public, sometimes it comes to me as I'm working the night shift and am told by the charge nurse that I've neglected a patient all night and that it's 6AM and she's tired of answering my patients lights for me all night and where have I been??!!! I've also had the common dream of coming to a class late in the semester that I haven't attended for weeks. My classmates all ask where have I been, the instructor sneers at me, and then I realize the final exam is tomorrow! Of course, I haven't studied! These are all variations of the "examination dream." I remember reading about it in school and if you google it, you'll find lots of research about it. I usually wake up laughing---saying to myself, "oh, it was that dream again; part of my nighttime entertainment.

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What you're describing is a variation of "The Examination Dream," a dream that has been studied in people with college degrees and those without. Some dream that they're in their underwear(or less) in public, sometimes it comes to me as I'm working the night shift and am told by the charge nurse that I've neglected a patient all night and that it's 6AM and she's tired of answering my patients lights for me all night and where have I been??!!! I've also had the common dream of coming to a class late in the semester that I haven't attended for weeks. My classmates all ask where have I been, the instructor sneers at me, and then I realize the final exam is tomorrow! Of course, I haven't studied! These are all variations of the "examination dream." I remember reading about it in school and if you google it, you'll find lots of research about it. I usually wake up laughing---saying to myself, "oh, it was that dream again; part of my nighttime entertainment.

I've had the school dream with the final exam part too! I'll have to Google it!;)

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I work nights. I have a recurring dream that it's just me (an aide) and another nurse working a night shift. Patient codes. No one comes. It's just me and the nurse. The nurse is pushing the drugs, but I am forced to practice outside my scope in order to save the pt - I must use the defibrillator.

Another recurring dream - again on nights - I fall asleep sitting at the desk, fall out of my chair as I awake to a code 99 (code blue in our hospital). In reality, I'm falling out of bed.

When I still lived at home, my mom would hear me talk in my sleep. She heard things like "what, are your hands painted on?? Can't you do this yourself?" (I say this to the nurse - half joking - who cannot get a pillow for a pt even though she is standing outside the linen closet next to the pt's room) and her favorite "just make the god---- beeping stop!!!" in regards to the monitors, IV's etc beeping. She also heard a lot of my inner dialogue that happens at work come out, especially regarding those pt's who use the hospital as the PCP, those that demand a coke NOW even though we have a code going on, etc. It's not very nice but in reality it really makes me mad and frustrates me.

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Specializes in Tele, ED/Pediatrics, CCU/MICU.

OHHH yes do I have them!!

My worst one so far happened fairly early on in my post-orientation phase in a busy ER....

In my dream, I arrive at work and see that I have a patient that looks like a kid from one of those "Feed the Children" commercials, with the distended abd.... I bend over to assess him and my stethoscope disintegrates before my eyes.

I clock out, drive through a busy intersection, and get a new one.

I get back to work, realize I havent seen my other 2 patients yet...

and then the charge nurse runs around the corner and frantically says "Didn't you know you have another patient on the wall????"

... and then I wake up in a cold sweat and wait for the tachycardia to go away.

Do you think we've let the stress go too far??

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I'm just glad that I'm not alone in this. My husband thinks I'm nuts. His job is a lot of physical labor, not so much mental, so he doesn't come home with it on his mind all the time. The idea that I can't let it go and it comes back in my sleep is beyond him.

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Wow.. It's nice to see what I have to look forward to! I'm pretty much my boss's go-to-girl at work and I already have dreams about waiting stupid tables and pouring people their stupid beers. Stupid dream. (I'm a little bitter, can you tell? LoL) :chuckle Guess I'll be a little bit more worried about dreams where I am forgetting patients meds and the like! jeeeeeeeeez

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