In my final last few years of working as a nurse were rather stressful. However, I regularly had really good dreams. I remember saying, "I can't wait until I fall to sleep to see where my dreams will take me".
Since I retired a year and a half ago, my dreams have changed. I regularly have dreams where I'm struggling to deal with some sort of situation. Plus, a lot of my dreams have to do with nursing.
I attribute this change in my dreams to the change in my life. When my life was more stressful, my dreams were an entertaining escape. Now that my life is nothing short of being continually enjoyable, my dreams are more serious in nature.
Like last night, I had an uncomfortable nursing dream. I'll set the stage with this simple drawing:
I was at work and a morning meeting was called. A group of staff lined up as if in a roll call. There happened to be three male nurses named Dave and a good natured joke was made with little chatters of laughter.
While I was standing in the group, a patient in need of some heavy duty hygienic measure crawled up to me through the crowd. I immediately picked him up and carried him to a lower level, down stairs, where I knew I could clean him up. As I carried him through the crowd, I felt ticked that no one offered to assist me, and I was especially upset with the other two Daves.
As I carried the patient to the lower level, I saw that it was a mess, with dirty laundry and such strewn on the floor.
I laid the patient down by something that looked like a transporter from Star Trek and went to a washing machine to gather supplies in order to clean the patient up. When I returned, the patient was in the process of falling to the floor. I was happy to be able to block his fall, as his head did not hit the floor, but landed on my foot.
I bent over to examine the patient, and was shocked to see his head fall off of his neck. I was relieved when I saw wires coming out of his head, knowing that the patient wasn't a human being, but a robot.
I wondered if I should follow the paperwork fall protocol, since he was a robot and not a real human being. I decided to go ahead with the paperwork to CYA.
One of the Daves said he wouldn't worry about any paperwork, that I wouldn't be blamed for any patient neglect because the patient was a robot. I ignored the other Dave and went ahead and filled out the paperwork.
What is your interpretation of this nursing dream?
Sounds like a great place to work. When I worked in Insurance it was kinda like that too. People respected each other and no weird female thing going on even though the office was full of women, no gossiping, back stabbing etc. It was a great work environment. Same when I did HH, patients (for the most part) were very appreciative of the care they received. I couldn’t stand hospital nursing at all, not too bad at first but over the years everything just went downhill.
I always said my retirement job would be a Walmart greeter bc I figured how mad could they be just walking into the door and getting a cart.
Really happy for you that you found a good place.
We are running away with Daveys thread but I don’t think he will mind.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
10 hours ago, Daisy4RN said:
We are running away with Daveys thread but I don’t think he will mind.
Nah. I like being tubular in a gnarly sort of way. Less linear, more organic.
Besides, I worked in retail and with cash registers back in the 70's, just about the time they switched from the mechanical to the electrical/digital types.
Well, back to the program, I had another nursing dream last night. I was working at St. Anomaly's doing admissions. There was one other nurse there who had previously worked at Wrongway and I asked her, "Don't you think admissions here are more streamlined than they were at Wrongway?" and she agreed they were.
Later in the dream I was sitting in a lounge when some young hotshot new male nurse with a plastic face began singing his own praises. I said something about being in the field for 41 years and he had no concept of that amount of time.
I also mentioned how things had changed in the field, as they were now extracting shark's teeth, replacing them with titanium implants, and implanting the shark's teeth in humans.
The other nurse from Wrongway came in and asked if we wanted to donate money for a pizza. The young hotshot nurse dropped nine dollars on the floor and the other nurse picked it up, sounding like an auctioneer, "I have nine dollars, who will give me ten?" I pulled a ten dollar bill out of my wallet and gave it to her.
In typing that last sentence, something which happened yesterday popped into my head: While out shopping at an antique store, Belinda asked me if I had a ten dollar bill. I remembered it because the portion of the dream where I took ten dollars out of my wallet in my dream and the antique store were the same.
Isn't it something how our subconscious uses symbols and snippets of our lives to make full length, Technicolor dreams?
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
For the third night in a row, another nursing dream!
This one was short and more realistic than the others. I was reviewing an MAR, one of the old hand written types, which contained realistic PRNs like Tylenol, MOM, Mylanta, and haloperidol/lorazepam IM.
An off screen voice I recognized as one of the nurses that I worked with at Wrongway mentioned the PRN IM was in case a real patient mentioned by his real name went off. I mentioned this patient in a thread here on AN some time ago.
Being a nurse was such a big part of my life for so many years, it's no wonder that I regularly have related dreams, as I do of those who were once a big part of my life and are now gone.
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
I haven’t worked in a hospital in many years, but I still have nightmares about nursing there. Sometimes it’s the fictional patient who came in the middle of the night and I never knew it until the nurse manager (who for some reason, or no reason, disliked me IRL) asked me about him. Other times it’s about working with OB patients and babies or floating to critical care and being completely flummoxed as to how to care for them. (Which is silly because I learned many of those skills by working in those departments.) Is is possible to have nursing PTSD? LOL.
Besides, I worked in retail and with cash registers back in the 70's, just about the time they switched from the mechanical to the electrical/digital types.
Me too, but ours were still mechanical, almost like the old typewriter keys.
On 10/26/2021 at 5:45 AM, Davey Do said:
Nah. I like being tubular in a gnarly sort of way. Less linear, more organic.
LOL
Well, back to the program, I had another nursing dream last night. I was working at St. Anomaly's doing admissions. There was one other nurse there who had previously worked at Wrongway and I asked her, "Don't you think admissions here are more streamlined than they were at Wrongway?" and she agreed they were.
Later in the dream I was sitting in a lounge when some young hotshot new male nurse with a plastic face began singing his own praises. I said something about being in the field for 41 years and he had no concept of that amount of time.
I also mentioned how things had changed in the field, as they were now extracting shark's teeth, replacing them with titanium implants, and implanting the shark's teeth in humans.
The other nurse from Wrongway came in and asked if we wanted to donate money for a pizza. The young hotshot nurse dropped nine dollars on the floor and the other nurse picked it up, sounding like an auctioneer, "I have nine dollars, who will give me ten?" I pulled a ten dollar bill out of my wallet and gave it to her.
In typing that last sentence, something which happened yesterday popped into my head: While out shopping at an antique store, Belinda asked me if I had a ten dollar bill. I remembered it because the portion of the dream where I took ten dollars out of my wallet in my dream and the antique store were the same.
Isn't it something how our subconscious uses symbols and snippets of our lives to make full length, Technicolor dreams?
It is indeed something how our minds capture little parts of our lives that play out in our dreams.
I think your admission dream is probably bc we all know how cumbersome they became over the years.
The shark tooth dream is very interesting. I have been known to think/say that I don’t like how our society sometimes treats animals/pets better than some humans. Not sure how you feel about that but the dream could be sub/conscious of that feeling also, IDK.
Pizza money? Hot shot should not be giving any money. It’s bad enough when admin buys the pizza but even worse when you have to buy your own. Young hotshot show off know it all, need I say more. You regret giving up the 10 bucks.
Being a nurse was such a big part of my life for so many years, it's no wonder that I regularly have related dreams, as I do of those who were once a big part of my life and are now gone.
I think this is true for many of us. I have been out of the hospital for about 5 hrs and nursing for about 2 or so and I still have nursing dreams too. I think that we invest so much of our selves and have so much stress it is inevitable.
The cash registers these days are very sophisticated. They keep track of everything, you have to go through a certain computer procedure for returns, you can look up a lot of stuff, they keep track of inventory. They are Nifty and not as bad as Cerner or Epic
Specializes in ED, Tele, MedSurg, ADN, Outpatient, LTC, Peds.
My dream is always the same. The shift has ended and I haven't finished my morning meds! I can't find the med book and the patients are complaining! I always wake up in a sweat and sigh in relief that it was a dream!
Daisy4RN
2,238 Posts
@Emergent
Sounds like a great place to work. When I worked in Insurance it was kinda like that too. People respected each other and no weird female thing going on even though the office was full of women, no gossiping, back stabbing etc. It was a great work environment. Same when I did HH, patients (for the most part) were very appreciative of the care they received. I couldn’t stand hospital nursing at all, not too bad at first but over the years everything just went downhill.
I always said my retirement job would be a Walmart greeter bc I figured how mad could they be just walking into the door and getting a cart.
Really happy for you that you found a good place.
We are running away with Daveys thread but I don’t think he will mind.