Practice on each other?

We do assessments and vitals on each other. We do not do injections or IV starts on each other. Although we did administer eye drops to each other. Just wetting drops. You have to start somewhere.

We did some, like IVs, injections and physical assessments. However, anything involving needles was first performed on practice arms or pads.

We don't, but I think it is a little unfair to the patients that our first stick ever on a real person is on a paying client. I am sure the AIDS epidemic, etc in the 80's put an end to schools allowing student nurses to practice on each other. I think it would be good experience. Those rubber arms are not really the same. I just did this skill this week and would have been cool with practicing on each other.

Health Assessment is kind of limited when we are doing these assessments with our clothes on etc. I try to work with other guys and we take our shirts off etc to make it as real as possible.

We practiced on each other. I had a classmate with a bad habit of saying oops for everything. Not something you want to hear after being poked.

In my Lpn program we practiced on each other :) not much but for our IV therapy class I know I got stuck at least 5-6 times. It was fun though!

We practiced everything on each other except genital exams and foleys. I even let a fellow student try to drop a NG tube on me in class. I wanted to know how it felt before I had to do it on one of my patients.

We had to have a successful IV start on a classmate before we were signed off to do this in the field. Waivers were signed by all, without complaints.

We did, and thank god! Practicing venipuncture on a fake arm doesn't prepare you for a vein that moves, and a person that jumps as soon as you poke them. Or someone who is afraid. It is an important aspect of nursing school, in my opinion. I let almost everyone in my class stick me for their first time because I have amazing veins. Then, they moved on to harder people.

Just curious about something. I've seen pictures of nursing students practicing injections (and other things) on each other. Does your school do that? I think it's a bit odd...like it would be too much of a liability.

How is it a liability? Everyone in the program is an adult and agrees to participate.

We practiced injections on each other but not IVs. We gave each other IM Normal Saline. When we all needed TDAP boosters because of a pertussis outbreak at our pediatric clinical site, we gave them to each other too.

Also, I went to school long AFTER the AIDS epidemic began, 2002-2007 and we still gave each other injections. I'm not sure why AIDS would put an end to student nurses practicing on each other. You assume all blood is infected when practicing universal precautions so would take the same precautions with your fellow student who is HIV negative as you would with a patient who is HIV positive.