Patients afraid of needles...

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Every often we get a patient that has a fear of needles. What do you do? What's your secret in calming these patients?

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Specializes in Quality Control,Long Term Care, Psych, UM, CM.

As someone with a lot of tattoos, I am afraid of needles in a medical setting. Not getting shots, but IVs. I am terrified of IVs. For each pregnancy, I had to get IV because of induction. Each IV was successful only after multiple sticks.

I chose to get my tats. I was calm and was not in a hospital for an emergency or procedure. Believe me, it's totally different when someone is in the hospital....

Specializes in Emergency Department.
As someone with a lot of tattoos, I am afraid of needles in a medical setting. Not getting shots, but IVs. I am terrified of IVs. For each pregnancy, I had to get IV because of induction. Each IV was successful only after multiple sticks.

I chose to get my tats. I was calm and was not in a hospital for an emergency or procedure. Believe me, it's totally different when someone is in the hospital....

The technique for IV starts is just a whole lot different than shots. It's a LOT harder to make those painless for the patient. I don't like them either, but at least once under the skin it's not as bad....

These are the patients that make me scratch my head:

"Oooh, I don't like having my port accessed. Can you give me those little shots first?"

"What little shots?"

"You know, they do them with this really small needle and they put four or five of them around my port before they stick me."

"Injectable lidocaine?"

"That's the stuff! Can I have that?"

"Well, sure, I can go get an order for it, but you'd rather be stuck several times instead of once?"

"Uh, yeah - it hurts less."

"You don't want the lidocaine I just rub on?"

"No, I don't like that stuff. It hurts less with all the shots first."

Huh? To me, give me the one over multiples (and I'm not a fan of being stuck myself).

It's even better when I just drew PT/PTT peripherally.

I once asked a patient the above: you'd rather be stuck several times than once? She agreed - she'd never thought of it that way.

I'll out myself as someone with a tattoo who really, really hates injections. The tattoo needle barely scratches the surface, while an injection goes inside me and deposits stuff their. For me, it's thinking about what is happening that really makes me freak. I used to have to have Valium to get PPDs (that was pre-tattoo, in my teens, thank goodness I'm better now)! For whatever reason, blood draws don't bother me and I give blood regularly. I don't really think you should be judging anyone on a legitimate fear, no matter what body mods they may have. It really is a completely different situation.

I had an experience about that but not to patients but to a doctor. When I worked as a volunteer nurse in a prestigious hospital, I happened to assist one of the resident doctors there. She instructed me to inject the local anesthesia on the site. I know she's serious but we're not allowed to inject an anesthetic, considering that I'm just a volunteer. I asked her why would I do that. She pulled me at a corner and whispered, "Don't tell anyone about this but I'm afraid of needles." I don't know if she's just playing with me or what.

I'll out myself as someone with a tattoo who really, really hates injections. The tattoo needle barely scratches the surface, while an injection goes inside me and deposits stuff their. For me, it's thinking about what is happening that really makes me freak. I used to have to have Valium to get PPDs (that was pre-tattoo, in my teens, thank goodness I'm better now)! For whatever reason, blood draws don't bother me and I give blood regularly. I don't really think you should be judging anyone on a legitimate fear, no matter what body mods they may have. It really is a completely different situation.

I don't think this is passing judgement. :unsure: I guess it sort of is, but we're also just venting about something that seems, well, a bit odd - considering most of the time when you hear 'don't stick me' from someone with tattoos (and I do see this quite a bit in the military) the patient says, 'because it will hurt' and not for the reasons you describe. (And you ARE thinking, really? Because the main thing that kept me from ever getting a tattoo - I, for the record, have seen gorgeous ones and I do find them cool in an edgy sort of way - was the pain involved!) :)

It's an incongruence - a big incongruence. We're not denying that it's painful, and we're not strictly passing judgement, but it's a study in contradiction.

Lol. This is me. I can have blood drawn and get IVs all day long, but give me a shot and I will pass out. And I have quite a few tattoos. In painful areas. It's really quite embarrassing. I don't understand it myself.

Needles can be intimidating to most people.

I routinely let students and newbies practice IV starts on me.

I do it because I have decent veins and I tolerate it well and can be patient and encouraging, even when they're having trouble finding the vein or threading the cath.

Each time I do it, though, I'm reminded that IT HURTS. It's so easy to get into the routine that we sometimes forget that it's a generally unpleasant experience.

On the other hand, I'm also reminded that just because it hurts doesn't mean that one needs to cry out, swear, or - gulp - jerk their arm.

In my experience, the biggest weenies about getting IVs are the IV drug users.

Specializes in family practice and school nursing.

or the young ladies with the pierced eyebrow, lip, ears, tongue,naval, etc. whining about a shot or blood draw..no sympathy here

I had a patient when I was still in nursing school who was afraid of needles yet had a history of iv drug use. The Nurse I was working with had had no success convincing him to take his daily shot so she sent me in. What she didn't know was I give my son shots on a daily basis, for about 8 years at that point, so I had given a lot of shots... He let me give the shot and didn't even feel it, actually asked me if I had done it yet and I was already done... All that complaining for nothing! I was at the same facility for the next few days and he never gave another nurse any trouble... The Nurses were very grateful.

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