Why would med not draw up from vial

[FutureRN20190]

Hello all,

I am fairly new in the field and i have encountered this problem twice already and wanted to get some input from all you wonderful nurses out there.

My question is what would cause a medication from a single vial not want to draw up?

I inject the amount of air equivalent to the amount of med i am drawing up using a blunt tip needle into these vials but when I go to draw it up the med nothing comes out, my syringe fills with a bunch of air and it's very frustrating. What am I doing wrong? Has anyone encountered this before?

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Are you pulling the needle back so that it is in the fluid and not in the air you just injected?

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

Also- it the needle on the syringe tightly?

[FutureRN20190]

Yes, could it be the consistency of the med.. Would a bigger needle help? If there is even a bigger blunt needle...

[FutureRN20190]

I screwed on the needle as you normally would, not any tighter than usual. Could this have been a factor?

[dianah, ASN]

Moved to General Nursing

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

Because in order to make the cap sitting hermetically and sometimes also increase shelf life, the manufacturing process includes injection of oxygen-depleted gas mix under low pressure before capping, so to create a little vacuum in the vial.

Just make sure your needle sits rally tight and inject 2 cc (or more, for vial > 2 ml) of air before withdrawing.

[ohiobobcat]

For some meds, you have to pull the needle almost out of the vial for it to be sitting in the liquid in the vial. Sometimes the stopper of the vial has a little viewing area so you can see where the needle is sitting in the vial/liquid. I also slowly pull the needle out of the vial and draw back the syringe at the same time to get all of the liquid. Takes a bit of practice, but you'll get the hang of it.

[Castiela]

The higher the viscosity of the medication, the harder it will be to pull out. What were you trying to draw up?

[Sour Lemon]

Tap, tap, tap (pretty hard) ...sometimes it looks like the medication is at the bottom of the vial, but it's actually air and the medication is at the top. This happened to me all the time as a new grad (usually with those long, thin morphine vials). I was perplexed at the time, but it seems so simple, now.

[NuGuyNurse2b]

I get this problem when I try to withdraw Ativan for iv - it's so thick.

[R5RN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

If your needle is fully immersed in the medication but the syringe is filling with air (actually filling with air and not just meeting resistance/suction that would cause the plunger to return back to its original position), it sounds like the needle isn't connected tightly enough to the syringe and air is able to enter the syringe from that loose connection. If you're meeting resistance and the plunger IS returning back to its original position, try some of the suggestions the other posters have come up with.