First injection – Subcutaneous Clexane
I gave my first injection 4 August 2009 and after I gave it, I knew without a shadow of a doubt part of the reason I exist was to give injections to people.
It was only my first day at clinical placement but I told my supervising nurse I was ready to give the injection – I had been both nervous and excited about it but I wanted to get it over with. I went to the patient and found I had an audience more medical staff watching me. Ignoring them I mentally went through the instructions in my lecture notes – firstly, introduce yourself to the patient.
1) Introduction: I introduced and smiled at the nice happy middle aged man as I snapped on my snazzy latex gloves. Good for me, my first patient ever was very compliant and happy. He looked just like Penguin man from Batman.
2) Professional conduct: I kept to the NHMRC ‘s professional conduct guidelines. Just kidding. Basically the patient asked me if it was my first injection and no one replied him and my buddy nurse said “Don’t know. She won’t tell me”. Everyone around just smiled like Ronald McDonalds throughout the procedure. The patient smiled the widest. I suppose he had little entertainment sitting around the hospital.
3) Antiseptic: Swabbing the man’s well rounded stomach with an alcohol swab. I kept swabbing in circular motions around a large surface area of his stomach, and my embarassed buddy nurse said “that’s enough”.
To be honest, after I swabbed the area and put my swab into the kidney dish, I looked back at his stomach and was not sure where was the area I swabbed. Nevertheless, he did not show any signs of pain after, so I assume I had done an excellent job.
4) Procedure: I then pinched the skin and poked the needle in at 90 degrees. Some say pinch the skin, some say hold it tight. The staff then wanted me to pinch the skin so I did. But make sure the patient has fat to pinch in the first place.
The needle did not go in, and it is supposed to be guided in smoothly and rapidly. I looked at my buddy nurse, puzzled as to why the patient was not as easy to poke needles into as the practice sponges we had used in the university labs. To answer my question, she hit the top of my hand and that rammed the needle in.
5) Finishing up: I pushed the plunger in and then removed the needle. Everyone was beaming. I was sure they would have clapped if the patient in the next bed was not asleep, and I felt as if I had just finished an 8 hour surgical procedure.
Very good, said my buddy nurse. “So why couldn’t I get that needle in?” I asked her. “I gave you a blunt one,” she said. The hospital had run out of smaller, sharper needles. So we had used the needle we had used to draw up medications…
And that was my first experience ever giving a Clexane subcutaneous injection. Penguin man was then wheeled to a day room to get ready to be discharged, and with a beam on the face he then complemented me, to my chagrin, on “such a good job done. And you’re only 18″ too!
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