IV stories

I'm a medical practitioner student (essentially what would be considered internationally somewhere between an RN, NP, and PA. A bit of eachs scope of practice). I'm on a clinical rotation for the vascular access team (ARTs, IVs, PICCs, EJs, central lines, insertion, removal, troubleshooting, etc)

I've had a bad luck morning, so I'm looking for some stories. Good, bad, or funny. What impossible stick did you nail? What super fails do you have?

Good: We had an elderly farmer present to the ER after falling in his field and staying on the ground for a prolonged period of time. Aside from trauma, major concerns were heat crisis, the obvious dehydration, and potential for rhabdomyolysis. IV(s) were desperately needed. 2 IV teams were on site, and I was following the 2nd one as a student.

We had 2 veinfinding lamps going and multiple people going at once. The veins were tiny and difficult to hit, especially with dehydration. Besides all of that, he was doing a bit of thrashing. I got a successful stick in a vein in the small toe. It blew later, we couldn't get anything else, it turned out he had internal bleeds, so we had to do an IO.

Bad story: I was doing an IV on a younger athlete with garden hose veins. Impossible to miss, you could fit a slushie straw in any one of those. Patient was afraid of needles, and I had him convinced it that it'd be a super easy one-try IV with no issue. On the first try one rolled, on my second try I caused an infiltration injury, and my third try a vein blew. I asked for help, a student nurse who had only started 1 IV previously absolutely nailed it first try.

Submitted May 31, 2019 at 08:28AM by 7G0L8 http://bit.ly/2KeTfZT