IV Therapy Classes????

HELP!!! I am a recent grad with 3 mos. med/surg under my belt and have moved to CA and started work in a private medical oncology office. I love my work, but a major shortcoming for me is I have almost zero experience starting IV's. The hospital I worked at had an IV therapy team who took care of starting all iv's on the floor. I have the book knowledge, but need a practical experience class to gain confidence before sticking my poor sick chemo patients. So far, I am limited to port access (no problems there), but need to get up to speed with iv starts quickly. Any suggestions on classes in the SF east bay area? I am getting desperate!!!!!

Hi,

I don't know of any classes in the East Bay, but there is the Hospital Consortium Education Network in Burlingame (on the Peninsula) that offers an IV Therapy certification for LVN's and RN's. You might want to give them a call and see when they are offering the program. Their phone number is:

650-696-7860. Hope this helps. :)

Thanks for the suggestion...I had actually signed up for a course through them, which they cancelled and then last week I checked their web site and they are no longer doing courses for RN/LVN's, just their EMS program. Don't know why they stopped, but there goes a valuable resourse in the Bay area for continuing ed. I guess I'll just keep on looking!

The only blood draws I have to do now are on patients with ports. The lab tech does all draws on patients not receiving tx and my co-worker does all the iv starts and corresponding blood draws. We have a few patients with terrific veins and tomorrow I will start doing their starts. Wish me luck (or rather them!) I've started a few iv's but I am a bit nervous in this situation. None of the patients I will be starting are getting vesicants, so that helps in the nerves department.