Infusion nurse "ish"

[scribblz, BSN, CNA, LPN]

*initially posted this on general not realizing there was already a specific forum.

Hey fellow nurses!

My background in nursing is as an LPN for 10 years in mostly LTC settings with limited IV experience. 3 years ago I bridged and got my RN and have been trying to build as much IV experience as possible. Nursing school did not provide any IV placement experience which I found very disappointing. I work on a busy med surg unit and whenever possible start all my own lines. Our hospital has an IV team so the majority of our floor nurses never start IVs. To even be allowed to start my own IVs I had to exaggerate my previous IV experience to my boss and convince him that I needed to keep my skills up. Then I watched every YouTube video on IVs I could find and befriended the IV team crew to absorb as much of their wisdom as possible.

Now I'm doing home infusion nursing on the side, and that's mildly terrifying. You do an online training tutorial on the med and then you are expected to go to someone's house and mix/ reconstitute the med, train the patient about it and establish IV access. Often you don't know if they have a port that needs to be accessed, a PICC or need a peripheral until you get there. Sometimes their pharmacy doesn't even provide all the supplies you need.

But, I'm sticking with it as I need the 1,600 hours of experience to qualify to test for the CRNI, and hopefully get a position in a hospital IV team.

To all of you current or aspiring IV nurses what was your journey like to get there?