The first time you ever used a needle and/or cath

[Lala27poodles]

Was it frightening? Were you shaky or confident?

I've actually used needles on my friends before, and it was fine. I double pierced 3 or 4 of my girlfriend's ears, and it was pretty cool.

The one thing that I CANNOT move past is the catheter. Especially the male catheter. It just looks so painful, and it makes my skin crawl thinking about it? Do you think I'll ever get past catheters?

What if i turn white and pass out when the teacher demonstrates? Should I watch videos on youtube? HELP?!

[Chrissy24RN]

I am a Labor & Delivery nurse and we have to start all our own IV's and Foleys. I have been doing this for 1 year and foleys are soooo easy but IV's can be tough.

Foleys on the female: you need to pull back on the labia minorum which is wayyyy in there. Many mistakes are made by pulling back on the majorum (outer labia) and not finding anything. Usually if you are in the right spot when you wash with the betadine it will pool for an instant and the area looks like a small star. If you insert the foley halfway and you dont get return then you are probably in the lady parts. Fine, inflate the bulb and leave it there. Do not remove it. This way when you try again you know that you need to go a little north.

IV's: well i have to say that our healthy female pregnant pt's usually have nice veins. The best thing you can do is see if you can shadow or do some IV's in day surgery (where they do it on everyone) or IV team. Otherwise I think and important thing is choosin a angiocath size for what you have. We try to use 18 gage on our pt's since we may have to give fluids fast or blood, but sometimes we need to use 20 gage. AC area is not the best spot. Hand veins are ok but they usually hurt the most. We like to find veins on the lateral aspect of the wrist/arm. Usually there are some juicy ones there. Otherwise you can see some on the anterior forearm that are usually good with a smaller gage angiocath.

It seriously takes practice and I am not an expert by any means. I have had to do 2 attempts on pt's and sometimes I get it right away. Sometimes I have to have someone else do it.

Good Luck!

:)