IV Course for LPN

[ghost]

Having finished up my BSN degree and waiting for my GN internship, I came across a community college's "IV Course for LPN."

Do you think this would be beneficial to take before going into the GN internship. In college I didnt get much of a change to practice starting IVs (only 4 times). I would like to be more confident going about that skill going into the internship.

Thoughts?

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

Six months into my first hospital job as an RN I realized I was having serious problems with my IVs. This was out here in California. At the urging of one of the hospital supervisors I took the 30 hour IV therapy course for LVNs that was offered out here. It was the best thing I did. The man who was teaching the course had been a military corpsman and knew his stuff. Because I was a practicing RN I was able to go to work and put into practice what he was teaching and I started making improvements very quickly. I did so good at it that within a few months I was getting called to go to other units to do the hard sticks. I didn't just learn about sticking people. I learned a lot about working with the tubings and troubleshooting IVs that weren't running well. I eventually went on to work on two different IV teams in later years and did at one time hold a national certification in IV therapy. Yes, take the class. It would be nice if you could take it while you were actually doing your internship so you would have some patients to practice on (you don't tell the patients that).