Need Help Taking BP

I am new to this forum and also in my first semester of nursing school and I am so disappointed in mself because I failed the blood pressure performance test and I have one more chance to take it or I'm out of the program....Any tips on taking BP?

Practice practice practice! The more you practice, the more comfortable and confident you'll be with it. Also, make sure that you really palpate the brachial pulse well before placing your stethoscope, even if it takes you awhile, then hold the stethoscope firmly and try to avoid any movement. Good luck!

Training your ears I've found is the best advice I've been given...I just started too and I remember I was wayyyy intimidated at check offs. Practice on EVERYONE you can... I swear I like brusied my boyfriend from trying to find his brachial so many times. I also found that being confident is sometimes your strongest asset..you can do it. Its tough at first but you will get it if you keep practicing! Good luck

Try this website. It really helped me concentrate on what to listen for. I am a first year also and my first checkoff on BP is Tuesday.

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/medical/bhs/tutorial/q1.htm

I agree with the 'practice, practice, practice' advice - only last January was I in your position...failing the first attempt because I was so nervous (and despite being efficient at it in a non testing environment)...Now I trust my own manual method of taking BP over the automatic cuffs they have in the hospitals. Just last night I had to use the manual cuff because the automatic cuff was puffing up to 200 and choking off a poor 88 y/o woman's arm. So I looked at the chart for her earlier recorded BP from the AM to see what her systolic was and used that as a base to use a manual cuff on her (she said the other staff members were 'killing' her and she couldn't convince them to try another method)...

Btw, do they have you doing the thing where you have to find the estimated systolic first?

Oooohhh...this was me three semesters ago. I failed bp the first time too. My best advice is to deflate the cuff slowly. If you let the air out too quickly, it gives you an inaccurate reading. HTH!

make sure you can hear out of your stethoscope. we have to test out at work and one of the girls cant use the supplied scopes has to use her personal one

Figure out a way not to get really stressed out. It is possible to hear only your own blood pounding in your ears if you get yourself freaked out enough (said from experience). Go SLOWLY. At check off, I do everything twice. The first time in my head, the second time for real. There's no other way for me to catch a mistake. I know you probably feel like you want to let the pressure out as fast as you can because it's hurting somebody's arm, but put that aside. They signed up to let a STUDENT take thier BP for a test, they need to suck it up and sit there a little longer. You are a student. You are NOT a nurse. Take your time, think, think, think about it first. And breathe. Good luck!!!!

stay calm!!! I know you will be nervous but that will hamper you hearing the beat.

the one thing I can say is pump up a further 30 over the 1st reading then listen for the first beat this is not the one you go by (i forget what this one is called) but go by the 2nd beat then just take your time and listen really carefully for the beats to disappear. the main thing is stay calm sometimes you can hear your heart not the patients but I am sure thats not the case here. Just take your time if you dont get it pump again you can repump until you tell assessor what you got. redo until you hear what you know is right.

Watch letting the air out too slowly. I did this on my first check off and they failed me. I was taught to let it out slowly in my required CNA class, but when we did Fundamentals checkoffs, they were very picky about how fast or slowly you the air out. I retested and barely passed. I get so nervous doing blood pressure check offs, I can do it fine during practice.