Nursing Nightmares

[0.adamantite]

What kinds of nightmares or dreams do you have as a nurse / pca / healthcare worker?

As a PCA - I used to work at a nursing home with the same group of residents. I would dream about doing a toileting round on them, taking each one to the bathroom in my sleep, in the same exhausting pattern I had been doing for years. I would never wake up refreshed!

As an RN - I have recurrent nightmares about forgetting I had a patient on my assignment. I'll get to report and then the horror dawns on me that I forgot about the patient in room "7" all shift - never assessed them, checked on them, or gave them meds, even though they were assigned to me. I have nightmares about missing entire med passes (i.e. I suddenly realize it's 1030 and haven't done my AM med pass). Not really a dream, but the first time I rotated to night shift, I forgot and woke up in the afternoon in a blind panic that I was late for shift - I even called the hospital to try to salvage myself.

What other kinds of dreams do you have?

[uRNmyway, ASN, RN]

Similar to yours I guess. Dreams that no matter what I do, I can never catch up. It'll be hours after my shift has ended and I'm not done, still getting admissions, patients crumping, and those awful pumps beeping.

[0.adamantite]

Oh yes, I forgot about the dream where I was orienting on at a new job at the nursing home and they informed me that I had 500 patients (or some other ridiculous number) to pass AM medications to. I was scrambling even at the end of my shift at 1330 still trying to pass all of those medications!

[loriangel14, RN]

I have a recurring dream in which I show up for day shift about 10 AM. All my patients are still in bed unwashed and all have been incontinent and I have no meds given. I am in a complete panic because I don't know where to start.

And then there are the nights I go to bed and here IV pumps alarming in my dreams.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

When I first started working in a big open heart unit we took VS q15minutes for the first 8hours postop, did all our own RT treatments, drew all our own labs, and such. We had two-bed rooms, so you had one fresh heart still intubated on a vent, and one who got extubated this morning (or yesterday) and was on q2hour signs unless still on some vasoactive, then q30 minutes.

So I had this recurring dream where I dreamed an entire shift. Every single set of signs for both patients, suctions, labs, turns, chest tube drainage, urine output, cough and deep breathe, charting, the whole nine yards, from report to report. I woke up just exhausted. Having to go to work felt like working a double.

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

that I forgot something important. Guess we all do that, as we are constantly running checklists thru our brain.

[fetch, BSN, RN]

Without fail, when I am truly getting sick, I will have a dream about being at work much like your dreams as a PCA. Nothing will necessarily go wrong, but it'll be a full shift and totally exhausting. It won't feel like I got any rest at all, just that I was working the entire time.

[Emergent, RN]

I just woke up. I had been unceremoniously fired, no reason given. Then I was looking for another job at another hospital, they gave this sweet marijuana paste to everyone during downtime. I took it to fit in. I then went back to clean out my locker. One tech was speculating why I had been fired had something to do with what I had said while watching a movie at work.

[24gaDalek]

I work in the NICU. I frequently have dreams about working, then wake up half asleep and look around for the babies in isolettes in my room. A couple of times I have thought, "I wonder if the parents are mad that the babies are in my bedroom?"

[cardiacfreak, ADN]

I once had a dream where the patient got out of bed and was chasing me down the hall with a scalpel and all of my co-workers just sat there and laughed. I wonder what THAT means?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

I dream that I'm at work, and I fell asleep. I'm gonna get fired for sleeping on the job, but I can't wake up to go check on my patient. What an awful feeling!

With regard to the OP's dream about not knowing she had a patient for a whole shift -- that actually happened to me one time. sort of. I was charge nurse, and had assigned two patients to the float team nurse. He only took care of one of them. I noticed about 2 in the afternoon. I had answered the patient's call light for the umpteenth time that shift, and he asked for pain medication. I went to check the charting to see what his blood pressure had been and when he got his last dose, and there was NO CHARTING! There hadn't been any charting about 9:30 that morning when I gave him his LAST dose of pain medication, but at 9:30 you can kinda understand it. So I went to talk to Greg, the Float Team nurse. "I don't have that patient," he said. Kinda hard to argue about that when your name is in red letters on the dry erase board next to that patient's name. Nevertheless, he insisted he didn't have that patient, had never been told he had that patient, and had no way to know he had that patient. (You know the same way you knew you had the patient you DID take care of -- by checking the assignment sheet and the dry erase board!) Ever since that day, I always make sure to check charting to make sure patients are being taken care of when I'm in charge!

And yes, I had dreams about that incident for YEARS and probably will again tonight!

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

I used to dream about the call bell and alarm sounds; not so much anymore; I have "pre work" dreams/like will I be late to work.

I recently had a dream that I was late for work-I was too busy shopping for new Danskos but got side tracked and tried on Wonder Woman sneakers...I had to rush back to the store because I forgot to pay for the sneakers and I wanted my favorite Danskos back...don't know whether I got to work at all..