Unfortunately, anyone can face a situation where the skill of carrying out an injection is needed.
Today Bright Side shares the instructions and warns you that you should do it only in case of emergency. Intramuscular injections are the easiest injections, and we are going to show you how to do them.
Preparation
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- Make sure that it’s really an emergency.
- Ensure that you have the prescribed medicine and a syringe of the required volume.
- Wash your hands thoroughly, and wipe them with a single-use napkin.
- Find a suitable plate or tray where you can put everything you need. Sanitize its surface.
- The room should be well lit. Ask your “patient” to lie down so that their muscles will be relaxed.
- Put on sterile gloves. Sanitize them with alcohol.
- Prepare cotton swabs (soaked in alcohol) or medical alcohol wipes.
How to do an injection
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- If the medication is cold, warm it up.
- Extract the syringe from its package.
- Sanitize your hands and the vial. Open the ampoule, and draw the medication out. If the vial’s cover is rubbery and needs to be pierced, you have to replace the needle after drawing the medication out as the needle may become blunt.
- Replace the needle if you accidentally touch it.
- Turn the syringe needle up, and eject a bit of the medicine so that the air comes out.
- Visualize a big cross on your “patient’s” buttock. This cross divides the buttock into 4 parts. You will inject the medicine into the upper outer part to avoid hitting a nerve.
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- Wipe the spot where you are going to inject the medicine with an antiseptic wipe. Move from the center to the periphery.
- Place the needle at a 90° angle to the skin (warning: this only applies to intramuscular injections).
- In one quick move, insert the needle into the buttock. Approximately one-third of the needle should remain outside the body.
- Inject the medicine slowly – it’s more comfortable for the “patient.”
- Don’t pull the syringe back and forth. You can hold it with one hand and control the plunger with the other hand.
- Put an alcohol wipe on the skin near the injection site. Remove the needle in one move, and press the wound with the wipe.
- The needle should be capped, and all the tools should be properly disposed of.
- Wash your hands. Well done! You did it!
If you need to inject yourself
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- It’s more difficult to inject the medicine into the buttock in this case, and that’s why you can use your thigh.
- Sit down, and relax. You will need the middle of your thigh from the lateral side.
- The preparation and the process are the same. The skin should also be pierced perpendicularly.
- If it’s still difficult to find the right spot or you are too skinny, make a fold of the skin, and inject the medicine into it. Note that there should be only fat in the fold, not a muscle.
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- Never use a syringe or needle twice.
- It’s better to be on the safe side and sanitize everything with alcohol more than once.
We would like to remind you again that you should always call a doctor in emergency cases that require an injection.
