A patient with fluctuating levels of awareness,confusion,and disorientation shouts,"The bugs,they are crawling on my legs! Get them off me!" The nurse's inspections show that no insects or other possible causes of the patient's perceptions are visible.The nurse can best assess this presentation as:

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The patient feels bugs crawling on her legs,even though no sensory stimulus is actually present.A false sensory perception is called a hallucination,and when the sense involved is touch (the sensation of bugs crawling on her body)the experience is called tactile hallucinations.These are often a part of the symptom constellation of delirium.Perseveration is the purposeless repetition of a particular theme,phrase or behavior.Hypermetamorphosis is a behavior wherein the patient is drawn to touching everything in his/her environment (as if sampling them by touch).An illusion is a misperception of a genuine stimulus (e.g. ,a patient in a dimly lit room mistakes a coat on a coat rack for a person standing in the corner. )In this scenario,there is no evidence of a basis in reality for the patient's perception.

A Patient with Fluctuating Levels of Awareness,confusion,and Disorientation Shouts,"The Bugs,they