I’m going on a week’s vacation with my girlfriend in August. She’s on medication that requires her to get a shot in the butt once a day. At the moment her mother is helping her out, but I will have to do the honours when we’re away.
Any good advice/techniques? What part of the ass to aim for? How deep to push the needle? How to avoid inflicting too much pain?
Safety considerations (hygiene will of course be paramount, but is there anything else I should know - e.g. removing air bubbles etc.)?
If at all possible, ask a nurse or other medical professional to demonstrate, but it’s really not that hard.
I take insulin. I was taught to gently roll or shake the bottle. Take an alcohol sponge (those little bits of paper soaked with alcohol), wipe the top of the bottle. Draw back the plunger to take in as much air as you’ll draw medicine…if you will be drawing 50 units of medicine, draw 50 units of air. Put the needle through the rubber barrier with the bottle right side up, depress plunger. Turn the bottle and needle upside down, slowly draw back the plunger. If you draw it back too fast, you might draw air as well as medicine. No big deal, just depress the plunger again until you’ve pushed the air back into the bottle. Remove the syringe when you have the full dose, flick the barrel a couple of times to make sure you get the air bubbles to the needle end. If there’s a lot of air, again, depress the plunger very carefully.
Swab the injection site with the alcohol sponge, push the needle in QUICKLY (if it’s going to hurt at all, getting it over with quickly is better), and inject the medicine. Theoretically, you’re supposed to draw back the plunger a tiny bit to see if you’ve hit a blood vessel, but I never do. Remove the needle, swab the area again with the sponge (the same sponge is used all three times), and watch for a couple of seconds for bleeding.
I inject myself, and I’m not really flexible enough to put it in my butt. From what I remember, though, you’re supposed to mentally divide each cheek into quarters, and you want to inject somewhere in the upper outside quarter of the cheek.
Ask your girlfriend to save a couple of syringes for you to practice with. Draw up air, depress the syringe. And practice jabbing the needle into an orange or lemon. Remember, a quick jab is better than slowly easing it in.
There are several different kinds of injections. The technique is different for each. It depends on where the medication is supposed to wind up, and somewhat on the character of the medication itself (how watery it is).
Some meds are supposed to wind up just under the skin. Some go into the muscle. I think there are others.
For subcutaneous, that is, under the skin, if your girlfriend were a cat I’d say you pull up some back skin between three fingers, one of which is toward the rear and the others toward the front sides. Then you get the needle into the rear face of the tent and watch out that you don’t come back out one of the other sides. You also do it in a different spot each day so it doesn’t mess up any one area too much.
I imagine there are techniques for people, too - but the important thing is to find out what kind of injection you need to do first.
I would also like to know what you will be giving, the amount in milliliters, the gauge and length of the needle, and if the injections is intramuscular (it sounds like it, but I’d like to be sure.)
Injections in the dorsogluteal site are no longer taught in my nusing school, as being too easy to hit the sciatic nerve. Now it is more at the side of the hip, called the ventrogluteal site. here is an article describing the procedure.
This page gives a good description of how to give a ventrogluteal injectionincluding a picture of how to locate the site and includes a link to a video of how NOT to do it!
Yes we need to know what medication it is. Some meds cannot be given quickly as they are quite viscous. Also, I do suggest pulling back on the syringe a bit before injecting to make sure you are not injecting into a blood vessel. I am an RN but I also self inject shot twice a day and I have hit blood vessels a few times over the years.
I’d recommend watching her mom do it a couple times.
Do:
Alcohol swab both injection site and the rubber top of the medicine vial
Remove air from the syringe before injecting
Assuming intramuscular injection, insert needle all the way in a single firm motion
Assuming intramuscular injection, draw back plunger and check for blood
Pressure on injection site afterwards
Have her mom draw a target with permanent marker on her body (assuming you aren’t going to a nudist colony.)
If you pull back and get blood into the needle then you don’t want to inject the medication, because then you’ll be giving it intravenously instead of intramuscularly, and it’ll be absorbed much quicker than it’s supposed to be.
As long as you don’t push the medication it shouldn’t be much of a problem, just put a bandaid on it. If it’s bleeding a fair bit use some gauze and pressure, and tape it.
ETA: To be clear: if I got blood into the needle and/or the chamber of the syringe I’d throw it all out, not simply try again with the same needle.
Thanks everyone so far. Unfortunately the kind of injection and the drug/s involved are all very vague because she’s in a different country to me, so I haven’t seen the procedure yet.
No need to worry too much about air bubbles for an IM injection - it’s really only a problem if its a pretty big bubble and an IV injection. I often intentionally leave a small bubble near the base of the plunger - just enough to push the last of the medication through the needle. If you get blood when you draw back you have 2 options. Abandon that site, draw up a new dose and give it on the other side or, if it is a really expensive medication (like some fertility meds), pull the needle out a little, check for blood in the new spot, and inject if you are clear of the vein. As long as you are far away from the midline (high up and off to the side near the curved hip bone) you are unlikely to have any problem at all. Don’t be tentative about piercing the skin. Hold it like a pencil, shoot it like a dart. Putting the needle in slowly is more painful.