heparin and insulin injections

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

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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.

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Specializes in NeuroICU/SICU/MICU.

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. :mad:

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