In this video, I'm gonna break down and go through with you how to take a manual blood pressure. Shout out to PinkCubs1 who commented on my YouTube video suggesting that I make a video on how to take a manual blood pressure. This one is for you. Guys, if you are like me...
nurse or are just into all things nursing consider subscribing to my channel because I have a lot of nursing stuff coming your way and if this video is helpful to you or you like it or whatever please give it a thumbs up. Now let's get into the video. Okay so what you're gonna need now in making a manual blood pressure is of course a stethoscope and a manual blood pressure cuff with a sphygmomanometer on it. Very hard word to say there. So here we go.
One of those. So the first thing you're going to want to do is find the brachial artery and finding that is on your elbow or your antecubital fossa and go in the middle and midline. Right there. I can feel it straight away.
I can feel my fingers. I can see my fingers bounding and I can feel it bounding Okay, right arm midline middle of your elbow And go in there. It is easy to find in Healthy people but in overweight people elderly people it's harder to find and what I normally do is I take my stethoscope Put it in the middle move it to the side a little bit So this right here is the sphygmomanometer now I'm only going to say that once this is video because it's a really hard word to say and I'm just gonna call this the dial from now on. And it goes from 20 to 300. Now the textbook would tell you to dial to pump the bulb up to about 10 to 20 millimeters of mercury above the expected systolic.
Now we're not psychics we can't just say yeah your blood pressure is going to be 120. So there's a way that you can expect the systolic. And the way you would do that is to find the radial pulse which is right here. There it is. And have a straight arm.
There it is. And you would pump the bulb up and when you don't feel the pulse anymore, that is the estimated systolic value. And then when you release it, when you feel the pulse again, that'll be the expected again so you can do it both ways. Alright so that's how you would do it and then you would go 10 to 20 above that so if my blood pressure if I had my brachial pulse here and I was pumping it pumping the bulb and at 1.30 couldn't feel it anymore here. That's my expected systolic.
Okay and then if again if I release the bulb and I started feeling the pulse here again at 130 again that is the expected systolic. All right so this is the bulb. This is the pressure valve control and you'd hold it in your right hand if you're right-handed left if you're left-handed and it's it opens and closes.
Now it is closed towards you. This was hard for me to understand when I started doing blood pressures. I kept, I had it open, kept pumping and I was like, oh nothing's happening, nothing's happening.
Oh well, nine times out of ten I had it open. So it takes a while but now I always have it closed and I remember this by closed towards me, open away. Okay, so now it's closed towards me.
And that's all the parts of the blood pressure cuff. Obviously you have the actual blood pressure cuff here. My blood pressure cuff has got a little indicator for the artery and for the left arm and the right arm.
And you would line it up with the brachial artery. So I've got it on my left arm and here it says left arm and I've got it lined up here with my brachial artery. And you go about two fingers above the crease of your elbow. And that's how you know you've got the cuff in the right spot.
So taking your blood pressure is a visual and audio assessment. So you'll need both your stethoscope and your eyes to have a look at the dial. Okay so what you would do put your stethoscope on put it here on the brachial because you've found it before.
Now I don't have enough arms so I'm just gonna see if that stays just about there and then the pressure valve push it towards you to have it closed and then let's say my expected systolic is 120 so I'm going to pump it up to 140 and then I'm going to release it very slowly and then the first bush that I see and hear is my systolic and the last bush that I see and hear is the diastolic. Now remember you can sometimes see the little tick go like that but you're not actually hearing it. That's not your systolic it's when you hear it and see it.
Alright so close that I'll pump it up to 140 release it slowly Okay, I can see the dial go like this. And obviously I can't tell what my blood pressure is because I'm not actually listening to it. But those are the steps you would go through.
Okay, so now that we know how we're going to do the blood pressure, what... listen out for. I'm going to show you how to do it on a patient.
Okay so now we're going to take a blood pressure on my patient who today looks a lot like my husband. Hey guys. It's nice enough to volunteer today. Okay so first off we need to estimate his systolic blood pressure and by doing that we need to feel for his radial artery, radial pulse which is just down there. There it is, nice and strong.
And what you do is close your valve, pressure valve towards you, close the valve, feel for the radial pulse here. Pump it up, look at the dial. When you can't feel the radial pulse anymore is the expected, so that's about 105, I can't feel the pulse anymore. Pump up a little bit more, release. When you feel the.
radial pulse again is his also expected systolic that came up a little bit lower at about 90. So I can sort of estimate it's going to be between 90 and 110. So I'm gonna pump it up 10 to 20 millimeters of mercury above my expected systolic. So I'm going to pump it up to about 130 okay. So I'll close the valve towards me.
Closed. Find the the brachial pulse right there. Put your stethoscope there. Right there. And then you pump it up, and we're going to pump it up to about 130. And then we're going to release the pressure valve very slowly, and we're going to look at the dial and the little tick, and it's going to go boof, boof, boof.
The first boof that you hear is your systolic. The last boof that you hear is your diastolic. Okay, so you've got to look and listen. All right, here we go.
Up to 130. Release slowly. Okay, so I heard... The first boof at 100 and the last boof I could hear was about 62. So my patient's blood pressure is 100 over 62. I hope this video has given you a little bit more confidence and understanding in...
in the manual blood pressure. It's not an easy thing, but once you get it, it's gonna get much easier from here. Now, if you have any questions, pop them in the comments below, or even better, if you have any video suggestions that you would like me to do, pop them in the comments below.
as well and I will make sure to get back to all of you. And guys, remember, as always, listen with your heart. My husband, who is a non-medical person, is now gonna try and take my blood pressure.
He's a little bit nervous. I can tell. I thought it was cool.