Thursday 26 June 2008

I Vant Your Blood....

Sorry couldn't help myself. I've been taking blood today.
My tourniquet was finally christened! I've been carrying it around in hopes that this day would finally come. Course this new found love for elastic and plastic clips might be short lived.








Infection control would rather we used something a little more like this...The only problem with these disposable tourniquets is that they pull on the skin. I've already had to dress the skin tear on a little old lady because of a doc and his tourniquet, and that wasn't a strip of rubber. See that's the difference. Of course these are being modelled on a cola bottle. You don't see how the rubber one pulls at the skin.

Still till then me and my tourniquet will be coming after your blood!

5 comments:

cellar_door said...

Do you get taught to take blood as part of your course? We apparently get taught it at uni but then have to do another course run by the trust to actually do it on a real, non-rubber person. I can see your point about the tourniquet, doesn't look too comfy...

WardBunny said...

Yea rubber arms and real people are two completely different things. Sadly. The one I practised on was so full of holes it was like an IV drug user on heparin. you poked the vein and you came away with (fake) blood on your hands.
It's all up to the placement if they want us to do it or not. Mine is a little funny about it. But still they let me try.
The docs like the rubber ones (I've seen some of them using the gloves tied around the arm), god knows why though.

cellar_door said...

Hehe, I can imagine, if they were anything like the rubber arses we got to practice pressure sore care on. I went into my first placement thinking bed sores would be full of fluff and odd smelling mould...

Anonymous said...

We have to use a tourniquet for every fistula or graft stuck, so we use the disposable ones. One trick I use to not create tears is to grab some kelly clamps and calmping the disposable tourniquet then tying it, plus much easier to get off.

WardBunny said...

Oh yea the college does teach us. Ironically our mental health students were taught it about 6 months before the adult branch. That was the start of 2nd year. We didn't get cannulation till the start of 3rd year though.

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