The other day I was at work surrounded by a sea of second year BScN students. They are on my floor, two days a week, for their clinical placement. Prior to shift start, the clinical teacher came up to me and politely asked that I reserve any flu shots for her students to administer and I agreed. Because I am a student myself I want them to experience all that they can. We ended up getting enough participants so that every student could administer a flu shot. The instructor helped them draw up the fluviral shots in syringes and they all had needles in their hands. I glanced at the needles and noticed that they were all subcutaneous needles that we use for blood thinners like heparin and I blurted out "those aren't the right needles" without thinking. I ended up making the instructor look incompetent in front of all her students. While I felt extremely guilty for the remainder of the day I forgave myself much later. I feel that Registered Nurse responsible for teaching students should know the appropriate length of an intramuscular needle. If I could repeat the situation I would have pulled the teacher aside instead. While I had no intentions of undermining the teacher, a person in an educational position should follow proper nursing procedures.
1 comment:
Those students will always be confused about what needles to use and they won't really know why they don't get it. That's why it's so important for us to do our own research as well. I think I was shown 3 different ways to landmark for a ventral-gluteal IM and still don't know what is best practice.
Post a Comment