One mug, five intravenous piercings; my Basic IV Therapy Training

29 Aug, 2008

One mug, five intravenous piercings; my Basic IV Therapy Training

Posted by: Zang Caesar In: Nursing/Allied Services| Personal

I already am through with my 3-month hospital training at Davao Regional Hospital, and feeling the need to be constantly updated and upgraded in the realm of Nursing, I attended Basic IV (Intravenous) Therapy Training at the same institution August 27-29, 2008. I actually made a 3-day leave at my being a private duty nurse for this, so to concentrate on the matter.

Supposedly, I was to attend this IV Therapy Training last July, but since I didn’t want to commit any more absences in my hospital training, I opted to attend the August training.

So how did the training go? It went all right. The lectures were not so really good; they were just fair. I never really have the knack on listening boring lectures. In fact I kept saying to my seatmates then that it would have been better if the lecturers just gave us the fact sheets and read them ourselves. But well, they had the task, or else where would the 2,000-peso fee go aside from the foods and materials?

On the first day, we had our pretest. The top 5 who got the highest scores in the test of 40 items got one mug each, and to my big surprise I was one of those. I really didn’t think I would make it. I was even muttering that those who borrowed fact sheets from previous trainees and have studied them beforehand would be the ones to get the highest scores. But I was one, like I said, and I even didn’t study.

Here’s the mug that I got for topping the pretest

The second day went on, with again, lousy lectures and some activities and icebreakers to at least electrify us for a moment out of boredom. And then by night at our homes, we found ourselves dreading for the last day, as we had to do return demonstrations on setting up intravenous fluids (IVF); how to administer medication by IVTT, heparin lock (heplock), or by incorporation to the IVF; how to administer parenteral nutrition; giving blood transfusion; and the core of the training—inserting IV cannula (for intravenous line for dextrose and meds).

On demonstrating IV insertion, one had to choose his partner and then they do insertion to each other. With my partner, we correctly inserted the IVF at first attempt, earning for ourselves 20 points. I finished all my return demonstrations around 2:30 pm, a very early mileage compared to most of the trainees. However, I was finally able to leave the institution by 6 PM. Why? Because I had to do “charitable works” as being the one to be inserted with the IV, as I have large, prominent veins that it lured almost everyone to try their insertion on me. In the end, I went home with 5 pierces on the veins, one mug, and a happy feeling that I am through with my training…