Questions I was afraid to ask....

Hello to everyone who might read my thread,

I am a new grad nurse (approximately 13 months on a medical-surgical floor in Brooklyn, NY). I am a new poster but longtime reader of allnurses.com.

I thought it might be helpful to new grads, and also worthwhile in terms of starting a healthy dialogue between new nurses and experienced nurses on the site, to start a thread on questions that one might be afraid to ask other nurses on the floor. While I find that most nurses on my floor are receptive to questions, the nursing education department is NOT! Also, some of my questions relate to actions of other nurses on the floor and I don't want to spread gossip. Or perhaps more senior nurses on the floor make the same mistake as me and tell me not to worry about it, when in actuality it is a clinical mistake. Maybe some of you out in nurse-land have encountered the same difficulty when trying to get a simple question answered.

A good rule of thumb for new grads (out of respect to experienced nurses) would be to try and look up a question before posting it on the thread.

My first question:

Sometimes when I give a SQ injection (most commonly in the belly) there is a bubble in the patient's skin afterward. I usually maintain appropriate technique and pinch the skin, etc., to get the subq tissue. Most often this is on a skinny elderly patient with not a lot of truncal adipose tissue. This is annoying to me and sometimes it really bothers the patient. Any advice?

More questions to come later, I am sure.