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.
2) My elderly male patient turned into a vampire, which was bad enough since I was still obligated to take care of them and they wanted to eat me. But then the vampire started switching from patient to patient so it was able to follow me from room to room.
I woke up gasping and sweating. But oddly enough had an AWESOME day at work that night.
My worst one involved a patient who screamed "Nurse, Nurse!!" for almost the entire shift…we had that patient on our unit for weeks. During my dream I could hear her screaming, but I couldn't find her anywhere. I ran around like a crazy person trying to find her, and when I did, her room was flooding, with the water rising fast!
Also, her family was sitting in there, and they were really ****** off I hadn't gotten there earlier to rescue their mother. They sat there and glared at me while I tried to carry this woman to safety. Wonder where that came from...
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Forgetting a patient is my most frequent nightmare. In my dream it'll be a few hours before shift change when I realize it and I'm scrambling. Weird to know this is so common!
I once has a dream that I ran a bag of amio wide open into a peripheral site. So that was a bummer.
But the scariest was when my vented ETOH withdrawal patient turned into a lion, roared out of bed, and started attacking staff. This may actually be the most realistic dream
The same Float Team nurse who "didn't know" he had two patients until 2 PM actually ran a bag of amio wide open into a peripheral site. Sigh.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
What ended up happening with your incident? I realized what happened 3 hours into my shift and thankfully was able to asses him and catch up meds. I was still mortified. What happened with not noticing for what I'm assuming was 7 hours if you started at 7?
He was on a couple of drips, which I hung when they got low because Greg wasn't listening to the pump alarm. I gave him his pain meds. When I realized that no one was taking care of him, I notified the manager, the house supervisor (responsible for overseeing Float Team staff) and the physician. We reviewed his vital signs from the monitor, and thankfully they were more or less stable. I assessed him, the manager went in and talked to him at length and he said he was OK because "that Ruby nurse kept checking on me." Greg was sent home on administrative leave. Not for the first time. Not long after that, he was sent home permanently.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I dreamt that I appeared at work in my street clothes and had no scrubs to put on. (Our hospital has a strict rule about scrubs.) As I was about to enter a patient's room I looked down at my clothes and thought, "Oh my gosh! How could I have done this!" and I ran out to my car. It was nearly an hour drive to get home, so I went to the scrub shop. It was closed, along with every other place I might purchase scrubs as I drove around for a seeming eternity! It was such a problem. I felt I couldn't work without my scrubs! I drove all over town anxiously searching for some instead of just getting a set from the OR!
Your OR gives you scrubs? Ours are so closely monitored that all we would get would be paper scrubs!
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
Your OR gives you scrubs? Ours are so closely monitored that all we would get would be paper scrubs!
We are pretty generous with ours.... With the stipulation that someone has to come down and get them but can't use our locker room. We used to have a big issue with people helping themselves to scrubs and items out of locked lockers before we added a key coded lock.
My worst nightmare has always had to do with bringing the wrong patient back for surgery and not realizing it until after the surgery has started. Fortunately I've yet to be involved in an incorrect surgery and hope it stays that way.
I love hearing about these dreams, it makes me feel a little less crazy when I have mine! :)
My most frequent was one about LTC - the administration placed an Alzheimer's admission on my wing of the facility on day shift, and when I came in for my evening shift, the days nurse neglected to give report on the admission. Mid-way through the shift - a little after supper time - the medications are delivered for some random name that I had never heard of, and I go all throughout the facility trying to find out WHO had the new admit. Well of course, everyone knows about this but me, and when I find this out, I go searching high and low for my patient, who has (OF COURSE) at this time, eloped!
I wake up in a panic at this point every time. I obviously had a lot of faith in the communication system at that facility!
Worst one was when I dreamed the forest was burning down around my house, and all I had was a garden hose. The house caught on fire, my pets were burning alive, and I was panicking trying to get a hold of my boss to tell her I'd be late for work.
I'll have an actual dream about work occasionally, but more often I wake up in bed thinking I am sleeping on the job. As a new graduate, this happened to me at least once a week, and I would really have to think hard to convince myself that I was at home with no patient assignment. If I fell asleep on the couch, I would think that my patient was in my bedroom. Sometimes I even think I'm sleeping in my patient's bed, and I have to look before I realize it's my husband sleeping next to me. Sometimes I wake up, look around, and panic that I need to clean up my disaster-area of a bedroom before the next nurse gets here for report. I'm about a year and a half into my career now, and luckily, I wake up in a panic less and less, and when I do, I am able to relax more quickly.
As far as actual dreams, the worst was when I dreamed I was taking care of a co-worker after heart surgery. There were supposed to be 2 nurses assigned to him, and I thought the other nurse was covering while I went for a break. Turns out I was supposed to be covering for the other nurse, and our sick co-worker ended up coding while I was away from the bedside. I couldn't look at him for weeks without feeling guilty.
As a CNA, I had a dream of one of my residents who passed away.. In the dream, I went to check on her and she was hiding under the covers. I went to pull the covers off of her and she jumped up from the covers and started hovering over me and chased me down the hall. I don't really remember what happened after that, but I remember waking up terrified.As a nursing student, I had a nightmare that I was trapped in one of my patients brain and was going through each structure of her brain.. I remember loud noises telling me I had to get to the pons part of the brain, and I was in the cerebellum.! Lol.. I have really weird dreams.!!
I have recurring dreams about forgetting a patient and also about being halfway through my shift without knowing anything about my assigned patients. The reason for the second scenario changes all the time, e.g. being called to a meeting, feeling ill during the shift, etc.
Cinquefoil
199 Posts
2) My elderly male patient turned into a vampire, which was bad enough since I was still obligated to take care of them and they wanted to eat me. But then the vampire started switching from patient to patient so it was able to follow me from room to room.
I woke up gasping and sweating. But oddly enough had an AWESOME day at work that night.