Extreme difficulty drawing blood ! Please help !!!!

[Cook23]

Hello ! I decided to join the forum since I've read a lot of posts on this site that were helpful. I hope You help me with my problem as well since I'm extremely disappointed.

I'm in nursing school and this is my final semester. We never had a formal teaching on phlebotomy, meaning it was never in our curriculum and no one ever bothered to teach us how to do it. Despite this however, in the clinic I practice this year, the medical workers send us to draw blood from the patients.

I've tried around 10 times to draw blood up to now and even though I succeeded the first time I couldn't seem to complete the procedure afterwards. I also ''broke'' some of the veins I tried to puncture and I felt really disappointed and embarrassed.

They made us use 20cc syringes from the very first time since there are no vacutainers or butterfly needles in our clinic. On top of it everyone else tells me how easy it is and how they manage to draw blood from every patient without much effort. Whenever I fail they look at me with a mocking look, making me feel dumb.

I looked up videos and FAQs online about venipuncture and even though it seems easy, everytime I try again no blood comes in the syringe or I go through the vein and break it. I asked some people to help me but they all say they have other things to do and leave.

Do you have any advise on how to deep to go and how I realize how deep the vein is ? I don't want to keep breaking veins and being mocked at. Do you believe I should have been better after 10 sticks ? After how many sticks should most people get good at venipuncture ?