today I'm going to be checking blood pressure now I already did a short video explaining what this is this is a sphigma manometer AKA blood pressure cuff before you even attempt to check blood pressure you want to make sure you know how to read this so I'll link that other video below explaining how to read this okay all right so I'm going to first place this on my patients um first of all I have her arm here on the desk and I'm doing her left arm you want to be consistent so whatever arm you normally do or that whatever arm your patient normally gets their blood pressure checked on you want to stick with that on so there's an artery marker here so I want to make sure that I align this with a brachial artery here so I'm going to put this on her um just like this and I'm aligning it with her brachial artery now when you put this on your patient's arm you want it to be nice you want it to be snug right but you don't want it to be so tight that it's already hurting your patient because once you start um pumping this up it's going to get tighter so you want it to be tight enough that it's not moving up and down but not so tight that it hurts your patient is this okay yeah okay so you want to put that on there now that I've put the blood pressure cuff on her arm now I'm going to put my stethoscope on and before you even go to check your blood pressure make sure your stethoscope is working you want to test your stethoscope by tapping on a diaphragm when you type on this diaphragm if you're not jumping because it's so loud on your ears it may not be on so you may have to twist it and top it again and then actually when I twisted it that first time I actually turned it off so you want to twist it and you should jump if you hit on it hard it should be so loud on the ear that it makes you jump a little bit that's how you know that it's on all right so I'm going to place the diaphragm of my stethoscope on the brachial artery now how do I know where to break your artery is because I can feel her pulse there now where you feel her pulse this is where you're going to place your stethoscope okay so I'm going to place my stethoscope here now in fact when I'm testing my students and I see them with the stethoscope all over here I know they're not hearing nothing because the brachial artery is not over there you're not going to hear anything so you want to be here I'm going to break your artery right now I want you guys to remember this righty tighty lefty Loosey so to tighten this up you're going to twist the bulb over this way to the right okay so I'm tightening that up and this up so now one thing I want to make a note of do not cover this with your thumb okay you want to avoid covering this with your thumb remember your thumb has a pulse so you want to avoid using your thumb and check pulse as well as having it here while you're checking blood pressure so you can hold it like this or even like that okay so I'm going to hold it just like this and I'm gonna tighten this up by twisting this all the way over to the right and then when I'm listening for her blood pressure I'm going to twist this slowly and remember as you're listening that first sound that you hear that's going to be your top number okay and so wherever this needle is pointed to when that sound comes in that is your systolic pressure your top number okay as you're listening to the heartbeat or karakoff sounds when that sound goes out whatever number that this needle is pointing to that is your bottom number or your diastolic pressure okay so let's go ahead and listen so I'm going to tighten it up again and I'm going to go up till about 180 okay now I'm not up to 180 I'm going to let it down slowly so I can I'm not too slow but slow enough so that I can catch that top number okay so I heard it at 104. that's going to be my top number and then I stopped hearing it at 70. okay so once I get that bottom number there's no need to to let it come down slowly just let the air out once you get that bottom number so the key is knowing how to read this all right first you want to know how to read this because if you're checking blood pressure and you're listening you don't even know what you're listening for okay so you got to know how to read it alrighty so I mentioned that I do have a video already explaining how to read this big monometer but let me just go ahead and do a quick review while I'm here for those of you that need it so as you should already know the Bold lines on the sphygmomanometer and excuse the lighting um there but as you already know the Bold lines on this figma manometer those are all red and tens right the smaller lines are red and twos so that bold line between the 20 and 40 that's going to be 30 right and then you know between um 80 and 100 that's 90 and then between 140 and 160 that's 150 between 220 and 240 that's 230 and so on and so forth so those are all tens right the smaller lines of reading twos so that line that little small line after the 60 that's going to be 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 um 76 78 80. so you got to make sure you know how to count by twos okay um and this is one of those things like I just want to send some encouragement for people that are struggling with blood pressure some people they get it right away and for others it takes them a while and it's okay practice makes perfect so this is why I recommend definitely getting your own um blood pressure cuff for for home um I know you probably get one and practice on at school but this kit right here I'm going to link it down below because this is on Amazon for only about 25 and it comes as a set and um if you buy stethoscope by itself you want to spend about that or more anyway so you may as well just get this set so you can practice at home on your children your significant other siblings parents whoever um whoever would let you practice on them so that way you can you you can get this because it takes practice between learning how to just look at it and read it quickly and then knowing how to you know quickly um check the blood pressure because it's medical assistance you're going to be moving quickly and the office you're going to have patience waiting for you so this is one of those skills you have to have as a medical assistant the provider relies on us for accurate readings so I hope that this video was helpful as always feel free to um you know ask questions down below or email me again I will link this below this is only about 25 on Amazon and they do come in different colors so um if purple is not your thing they have blue green red all kinds of colors so um you know I'll leave that down below all right guys be blessed