blowing veins during IV starts

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I've been a nurse for seven months, and I'm doing well, except that I suck at starting IVs. In school I was almost completely unable to do them, and I've improved to the point that now I virtually always can find and hit the vein with blood return, but I blow them constantly. I don't know what I'm doing wrong--I try to be gentle and advance the catheter very slowly, but they barely advance and when I try to flush, I just get a bubble under the skin and the patient gets a lovely bruis. I just suck at it, and my poor patients end up getting re-stuck by our charge nurse or someone who is actually capable of doing a decent job at it. It's incredibly embarrassing. Any advice? If it matters, I'm on a high-acuity step down unit with mostly cardiac patients.

I'm a new grad as well. Not only am I bad at IV starts, but I'm also bad at blood draws :( I work in the ICU so a lot of times my patients will have central lines, so that only compounds to the problem. I've only gotten a few successful IVs and I often don't get blood on my first try. It's really embarrassing for me.

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Specializes in Infusion Nursing, Home Health Infusion.

all good advice...yes.... feel that vein. Yo do have to go after some veins that are not always the most desirable..... it is just a fact. Actaully that is all I ever do now it the difficult starts. When a new grad calls me for an IV start I usually will get an easy one and I am am happy to do it!

If the vein has a thick wall you need to use a larger gauge...not a small one such as a 22 gauge. otherwise you will just be chasing it around. So for thick walled vein ..go larger than a 22 gauge ...insert flush with the skin and make the poke 1/4th below where you see or feel the vein and feel the vein with your non dominate hand (train a finger) and once you are top of it increase your angle and then make a controlled quick jab into it. It works really well but just make sure you are on top of vein. So you are going to tunnel the catheter a bit so you need to use at least 1 1/4th inch catheter to do this trick.

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Specializes in Infusion Nursing, Home Health Infusion.

You can also use a sterile end cover or the side of it(the ones used to cover the sterile end of IV tubing) to make an indent or mark on the skin so you can use a no touch technique for your venipunture.

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my tip..in addition to the excellent advice above, is anchor the vein..and keep it anchored until you have finished advancing the cannula into the vein ... this was the tip that finally got me over the hump of 'every time i try i fail!'...

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I suck at them too, really bad. I worked in ICU before the ED so I didn't get much practice. I've gotten better in the ED, there were some days I got every IV start and others I got none. Just keep practicing. I'm going back to ICU soon, so I'll loose out on my practice again:(

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I'm new also and I found I was blowing the vein quite often. Someone suggested that I remove the tourniquet as soon as I got flashback before advancing the catheter. That has helped me so much and I am having success. Does anyone have thoughts on this?

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Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.
Just an FYI and to share and not being confrontational..that is NEVER my desire. :up: A deeper vein is NOT more prone to blowing! They are deeper of course, but that means they are usually larger so a deeper approach is needed. It is a matter of proper technique and feeling the vein and its quality and course PRIOR to prepping , They can be trickier to hit and that is why the previous poster thinks they blow more but this is not the case nor will you find any literature to support that claim.
Actually I said a surface vein is more prone to blowing, not a deeper one. ;) I have only been a nurse a year so it definitely is not expert advice, just what I have observed in my own practice. I would love time with the IV team to improve my technique and obviously if my observations hold no water then it is a technique issue on my part that makes the surface veins blow for me. Thanks iluvuvt.
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Specializes in Infusion Nursing, Home Health Infusion.

Forgive me :yes: then I must have misread it! Yes some can be but it also heavily depends on the quality of the vein, its size and many other patient factors. The elderly can be particularly vulnerable to this problem and thus the advice to ditch the tourniquet or put it on lightly. You can almost eliminate this from happening with good assessment, selection of a gauge suitable to vein, and good technique. This rarely happens to me anymore except on the frail elderly and those that have been on steriods for a long long time. What happens in a lot of those case is that it actually does not blow it just leaks out of the hole I used to get the cannula in. Thye are so frail it just does not even seal.

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There is some excellent advice here!! Veins are like snowflakes....no two are alike on people which makes IV starts interesting. From your description of the immediate swelling around the site could mean that the cannula isn't fully inside the vein yet, so the blood is flowing out of the vein causing the swelling. Maybe try advancing the needle just slightly more ensuring that it is actually inside the vein and then advance your catheter. You can tell if your in the vein or not most of the time by how smooth the catheter advances.

Also don't give up, this skill takes practice and lots of it!! So take every chance you get for IV starts and with time you will get them with no problem. Oh and heat packs do wonders too! :)

Hang in there!

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Specializes in ER trauma, ICU - trauma, neuro surgical.

Some more tips...

If you can't find anything in the hand or forearm, look at the bicep. Some people have nothing in their hands, but have massive pipes on the upper arm. It won't get in the way of starting a picc line either.

On elderly pts, you can get away with not using a tourniquet. Some elderly have no muscle or tissue, so the vein is literally looking right at you. If you have a tourniquet on super tight, the backup in pressure can cause the vein to blow once you pierce the vein. That's why someone mentioned taking the tourniquet off once you got a flash. So, if you think there's poor vein integrity (and the vein is practically sticking out of the arm), just inserting the IV can greatly reduce your chances of blowing the vein.

On elderly pts, if the skin is very frail, the the vein probably has poor integrity. Try and go higher. If you are looking at the vein and there are no clear borders (it looks more like a blue streak then a nice walled vein), then it will probably blow.

Try to never fish. The more you poke back and forth, the more likely you are going to blow the vein b/c you can basically scrap along the outside of it or going through it. Now, that doesn't mean to never fish b/c you will have to on many pts, but if you are fishing over and over in the same spot, try a different site.

If you look at the needle and cannula, you will notice that the needle sticks slightly out of the cannula. Once you get a flash of blood, only the needle is in. As nursehafty said, you have the slightly advance the cannula into the vein.

Assess the need for a proper degree of angle. Nurses fall into comfort zone when puncturing the skin. I don't know the actual recommendation for angle (maybe 20-30 degrees ), but every vein is different. Deep veins need a higher degree, superficial veins need close to no angle. But some nurses still go with that 30 degree angle and then lower the IV to the skin with the flash. That can either cause the needle to pierce the top of the vein or cause it to kink. Think about it. If the vein is deeper, the cannula is thread through the skin at an angle and then bends to go straight in the vein....it can kink. Try and make sure you are inserting as parallel as possible (that's my opinion). If the angle is too steep, you will go right through it.

Don't try to be a hero and insert a larger bore IV. If you are looking at a vein and you are wondering if you should go with a 20 or 22, maybe go with a 22. If you think a 20 will definitely work, but maybe you could get an 18, go with the 20. You're not a pushover if you insert a 22. There is no need to insert a 16 unless you are planning on giving lots of fluid in a short time. For students, the bigger the gauge, the more likely you will blow the vein. Threading is something that each nurse does differently. A larger bore IV means you're that much closer to the sides of the vein. Once you get experience, you will be able to thread larger gauges easily.

If you hit a valve, there are two things you can do. You can advance the needle past the valve, but that is risky for now. You will learn how to advance the needle deep down the road. Or, you can remove the needle and then briskly flush the IV as you are advancing the cannula. When you give a powerful flush, the valve will open and you will be able to pass the cannula all the way in.

When you find a vein, scrub the area over and over with the alcohol wipe. I usually wipe the area back and forth, scrub, scrub...almost until the skin starts looking a little red. Don't do it to the point of the scrubbing the skin off (obviously), but scrub it until it is slightly (and mean slightly) irritating the skin. By doing this, you are overstimulating the area. The brain is interpreting the irritation to the skin and it's distracting the nerves. When you poke the needle, they don't even feel a thing. It's diversion and it totally works. If you ever stub your toe, pinch the back of your arm really hard. Your toe won't hurt at all until you stop pinching. It's the same process.

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Specializes in Neuro ICU and Med Surg.

Practice makes perfect. I love when patients tell me they are a difficult start, challange accepted. Take your time. Not too high of an angle. Don't always go with the veins you see, sometimes the deeper one you feel are the better ones.

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Specializes in Step-down, cardiac.
I would like to know if you are hitting the vein and then it blows or if you are hitting it,getting a nice flashback and then you advance the cannula and then it blows? Those are two different issues! What product are you using if it is an introcan I have a nice step by step instruction sheet I wrote that I can E mail to you.

Thank you, everyone, for your advice! Yes, I'm getting the vein, getting flashback, but then when I go to advance the cannula, it just goes in a tiny bit and then sort of sticks, and the flashback stops, and that's it. Then, if I try to flush it in, I just make a big swelling under the skin. I think I forget to advance the needle that tiny bit more after I get flashback a lot of the time. Maybe putting the tourniquet on higher up the arm (or not at all with the elderly, which I do sometimes, as recommended) would prevent some of the blowouts.

I am generally just putting in IVs for regular fluid and antibiotics--we don't do chemo or anything like that. I'm not sure what an introcan is; my unit just uses normal IV needles, 20s and 22s. I don't think we even keep 18s in stock on our unit.

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