heparin and insulin injections

[the lord's best]

why do you not aspirate when giving heparin or insulin injections?

[CT Pixie, BSN, RN]

Because they are Subcutaneous injections. Under normal circumstances, only IM injections are aspirated. (we were taught in school only to aspirate IM injections)

The needles for a sq injection aren't usually long enough to go deep enough to hit a vessel.

[RNMeg]

I'm only a student, but I believe it's because those are subcutaneous injections, where there are far fewer blood vessels to hit, as opposed to the intramuscular injections where there is a higher likelihood of hitting a blood vessel.