What skill do you practice on one another...????

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IV starts, Breast exams, baths, IM or sub-q injections?

Or worse..NG's or Foleys....***shudder***

Tell us in detail what skills you perfrom on each other!!!!!

Specializes in (palliative care/oncology unit).
My school stopped letting students practice injections on each other a couple of years ago. We practiced ID on hotdogs and IM and SQ injections on chicken breasts and on manikins. We did IV starts on these pads that have "veins" filled w/ red water. Just out of curiousity...what exactly are you injecting into your classmates? NS right? There are plenty of folks in my class I wouldn't want coming at me w/ needles, lol!

We don't inject anything. The seringe is empty (no fluid, no air). Its a matter of going through the motions: clean, poke and pullout :) and we do this 2 at a time under very close scrutiny from our instructor. One girl almost fainted while sticking it top someone else...while another was rather 'vocal' while her nervous and shaking partner was getting ready to 'stick it'.

N_T_L

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I was practicing starting an IV which I failed the first time for not checking for the radial pulse.. Anyway, my teenage son said that I could practice on him, IF he could get off restriction for the day. So I did practice on him, every day for four days. I was so scared to hurt him, that I was crying. He just looked at me like I was crazy. It is very different when they are not in pain, and we are causing the pain. The fourth day, I got it... when the needle went in... he screamed when he saw the blood, so I pulled the needle out, forgetting to pull the catheter with it... so blood goes every where. Yes, I really failed in every way. He will never let me do that again. Needless to say, I gave him the whole week off restriction.

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bump

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Only things that are non-invasive - bed baths, occupied linen changes, VS, assessments... DEFINATELY no IVs, venipuncture, etc - we have dummies for those! :)

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I'm a new grad and the ONLY things we did were BPs, oral temps and pulse checks in our 1st semester. Not even apicals, or basic assessments. I really felt that we should have been able to start IVs on each other, since we wern't allowed to do it in clinical.

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I am in first semester. We have done vital signs including apical pulse, physical assessment (no breast or pelvic), bed bathing (in swimsuits), feeding each other, shaving the faces of the men in the class, transfers and positioning. For all injections we have a pad that we inject into and just go through the correct motions for IM Z-track. That's this week's skill. Next week, when all of us are checked off on meds and have passed the drug calculation test, we start giving them to patients in clinical with instructor present.

Next semester, we practice starting IV's on a dummy arm until we feel confident and then we will have to successfully start one IV on our skills lab partner in front of instructor before being allowed to start them at the hospital. Foley's and NG's will be done on anatomical mannequins.

I don't know yet what all third and fourth semester students do.

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we do iv starts and im injections, thankfully not foley's ng's or anything else

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So far we've done intradermal and IM injections, vitals, and a couple of people volunteered to do NG tubes on one another. That was quite the spectacle :uhoh21:

It's all on a volunteer basis though..you don't have to if you don't want to. I've done all but the NG tubes. I figured I'd rather my first go at it be on a fellow student who understood why I looked so clumsy :chuckle Really, injections with saline don't hurt at all.

Deana

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