Hey everyone, it's Sarah with RegisteredNurseRN.com and today I'm going to demonstrate how to find the nine most common pulse points. As the nurse, it's important to know these common pulse sites because some of them you will be using routinely during your assessments. Now, the ones that you're not using routinely, it's still really important to know where they are located.
And whenever you're assessing the pulse, you will be looking at a few things. One thing will be the rate, how fast is it? along with the strength and you'll be grading it on a scale 0 to 3 with 0 being absent, 1 plus it's weak, 2 plus it's normal, and 3 plus it's bounding. And then you'll want to look at the rhythm.
Is it regular or irregular? And as you feel on the pulse, some of the sides you will be feeling bilaterally to see if they're equal. The only one you really don't feel on at the same time is the carotid.
We will be feeling on that. one at a time. Now the nine pulse points we will be assessing in this video will be the temporal, the carotid, apical, brachial, radial, femoral, popliteal, posterior tibial, and dorsalis pedis.
To find the pulse points we're going to start from our head and work our way down. It just makes it easier going in that order. And to find the pulse points you can use your first two or first three fingers.
and we're going to find the temporal artery. And to find this artery, you'll want to find landmarks, and this always goes for any pulse point that you're trying to find. Now this temporal artery comes off of the external carotid and goes up.
And what you wanna do is you wanna find the tragus of the ear, which is this part of the ear, and the zygomatic arch that's found above it, which is a fancy way of saying the cheekbone. So your pulse site where this X is is found right here. This is your temporal artery and you'll want to feel bilaterally and see if they are equal and the time that a nurse really feels on this is during that head-to-toe assessment when whenever we're assessing the pulses in the head.
The next pulse point we're going to assess is the carotid artery and it is found in the neck and this artery is most commonly assessed during CPR in an adult. and it supplies our brain and our head with blood. Now whenever you are assessing the carotid artery as I pointed out at the beginning of the video you will assess each side at a time.
You will not do it bilaterally because we don't want to stimulate the vagus nerve which can drop the heart rate and decrease circulation to the brain. To find this pulse point we'll use the landmarks of the jaw because we're going to go below the jaw. We're going to have the patient tilt the head like this And we're going to find the trachea and the sternomastoid muscle. We're going to go in between that.
And you will be able to feel and you'll lightly just feel on the pulse. And then when you're done with that, you'll go to the other side and do the same thing. Now we're going to find the apical pulse point and this site is assessed during the head to toe assessment or before the administration of Digoxin and in the adult we want to make sure we listen to the apical pulse with our stethoscope for one full minute and to hold the medication if apical pulse is Less than 60 beats per minute and this site is the point of maximal impulse and is located at the apex of the heart So it's going to be on the left side of the chest at the fifth intercostal space midclavicularly.
So what you want to do, it's best if you have your patient lie on their back and you'll need your stethoscope by the way because you want to actually listen to the pulse and count it. So how you do that you want to find your landmarks. So you want to find your sternal notch which is this notch up here then go down the angle of Lewis and you're going to go to the second intercostal space midclavicular.
So this is about midclavicular. We're going to go to the second intercostal space, which is about right here. Now we got to get to the fifth intercostal space because this is where our pulse is. So we're going to go three, four, five. So our pulse is located here in this area.
Then we're going to take our stethoscope and we will listen and assess the pulse. Now let's find the pulse point in the arm, which is the brachial artery. And this is a major artery found in the upper arm and it will actually go and divide into the radial and the ulnar artery. Now we use this pulse point for whenever we're assessing the blood pressure and during CPR in an infant we will check this site and how you want to check this site is you want to have the patient extend their arm and turn their arm out where their palms are facing upward.
To find this artery you want to find the area of the cubital fossa which is this triangle area in front of the elbow and the brachial artery is found near the top of this cubital artery in this location right here. Next we're going to find the radial pulse point and this artery branches off from the brachial artery and helps provide circulation to our arm and hand and we most commonly use this pulse point for measuring a pulse rate in an adult and to find that how you're going to do that is just extend the arm out and make sure the palms are facing upward just like how you did with the brachial artery. This artery is found right below the thumb within the wrist area along the radial bone and you will assess it in this area right here. Next, we're going to find the femoral pulse point and this is a major artery in the groin that provides circulation to the legs.
And to feel this artery you have to palpate deeply in the groin area. and it is found below the inguinal ligament and between the pubic symphysis and the anterior superior iliac spine next we're going to find the popliteal pulse site and this comes off the femoral artery and is located behind the knee in these areas right here to find this pulse point you're going to flex the knee and you're going to take both your hands put them behind the knee and you will find it at about the middle area of the popliteal fossa, which is a diamond-shaped pitted area behind the knee. And this artery is pretty deep, so helping to bend the knee will help you find that artery. Now we're gonna find the posterior tibial and the dorsalis pedis. And these sites are assessed during your head-to-toe assessment, especially if your patient might have peripheral vascular disease, or if they've had a vascular procedure like a heart cath where they access the femoral artery will always be checking the pulses in these lower extremities now the dorsalis pedis I'm going to turn the foot a little bit this way is found here and in order to find that what you can do is find the EHL tendon the extensor helicus longus tendon that actually helps extend this big toe.
So if you lift your toe up for me, you can see that tendon right in here. Now just follow that tendon and then just go a little bit to the end of it and that will be your dorsalis pedis. Then we'll find the posterior tibial and this is found on the inside of the ankle, found between the back of the medial malleolus, which is the bony prominence of the ankle bone, and the neck.
Achilles tendon so you'll find it within this area right here Okay So that wraps up this video over the nine most common pulse points and remember whenever you are counting the pulse rate if it's regular You will count it for 30 seconds and multiply it by 2 if it's irregular You will count it for one full minute and we always count the apical pulse for one full minute Thank you so much for watching and don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more videos