Hey guys, this is Dave from Nurse Janks and in today's video we want to go over how to find good veins to start IVs or to draw blood. So I hope you guys will learn some new tips and tricks from this video. We're going to try to show you kind of some of the good places, some of the bad places, some of the things you should look for that are good veins, some of the things you should avoid. This will obviously vary depending on whether or not you're starting an IV or if you're just drawing blood.
If you have to draw blood, you can get away with a little bit more because you don't have to put the needle all the way into the patient's vein. All you have to do is just get a little bit in there, and then you can draw your blood and come out. But if you're putting in an IV, you have to remember the size of the IV catheter all has to be the same.
be inserted into the vein. So if you run into something like a valve and you can't get enough of the catheter in, you might not have success. There are floating methods and I'll link those in this video because I think those are very valuable because sometimes you really don't have many choices when it comes to good veins. So sometimes in the hospital, you don't have the greatest options as far as starting IVs.
Your patients might have a fistula on one arm, so you only have one arm to look at. And then maybe they have diabetes, something that makes it so that their veins are just not very good. Maybe they're very overweight.
It just gets difficult. So sometimes if you find a vein you're gonna have to kind of go for that one vein because maybe that's your only option And if there's a lot of valves in that vein, you're gonna need to figure out how to get through them So once again, I'll link that video here You guys can go check that out because that's really good for teaching you how to do that If you can avoid valves, I recommend you do and I'll kind of go over that a little bit in this video as well But I'll also link that video for how to find valves and then another video for how to float IVs So looking in the AC area, you can see that I have actually four big big areas. There's two in the middle and then one on each side.
I usually like to start by going by sight because I feel like it's the fastest thing to do to find some veins. You can see some more here in the forearm, nice and straight. That's always a good thing. Then looking onto the hand, you've got another couple of options of some veins that look a little bit straight here. Usually, like I said, I go by sight and then depending on what I see, I'll start feeling around, see if they feel like they might be suitable veins.
There's always that wrist radial vein right there too. So looking more specifically onto the hand I want you guys to notice kind of what's happening here with some of these veins. It almost looks like a Y.
There's one vein at the bottom that I'm just touching that's the bottom of the Y and then there's the two tops of the Y and the reason this is important is because where the all those veins meet each other it's called a bifurcation and what I'm doing right now is I'm kind of Valve testing I'm holding a piece that's distal of the vein and I'm trying to push the blood through and when I let go if It flows all the way back that means there shouldn't be a valve there But if it doesn't flow all the way back then you might have a valve So this is an example of an area that I would avoid Which is the bottom part of this little Y? Because if you hit the center point where all the veins join you might have a real difficulty getting the catheter all the way in instead what I would do is try to pick one of the the top ends of the Y and start there because that way you know you're not going to run right into something that could be problematic for you. So moving along you can kind of see that radial vein once again a little bit closer up this time. That's a good option particularly in women I feel like that vein is one that kind of pops up a little bit better than normal. So definitely give that one a look.
And then you have your hand veins. These can be good. They can also be pretty superficial and easy to see in older people, but they might not actually take a catheter very well. If they're very dark blue and they move around easily with like tissue paper skin, as you might say in like an older person, they are probably going to be very easily blown veins, so be gentle with them.
And then this is like your last resort kind of a thing on the knee. under part of the forearm there and like the wrist. If you have to do that, you're really desperate.
Once again here, you're getting desperate if you're looking into finger veins, but I have had to do this in the past. The veins will actually sometimes be surprisingly durable in that area. If you're looking for a finger vein, definitely look onto the sides of the knuckles because that's where they hang out. So there's a bit of a difference in finding veins on men and women. For men, they tend to have less fat covering them, and men just have more muscle mass, so they're going to be sticking out, and they're going to just be easier to find.
For women, they might be a little bit deeper. So in this example, we're looking at another AC region, and already I'm kind of using the sight methods to try to find out where the green, that green-blue kind of color of veins can be seen. Through the skin, this is always something that you guys can try to do.
It might end up saving you some time. Click onto the hand region here. You can see kind of where I'm pointing at.
You can see the color differences, and those will represent the veins underneath the skin. Also, on the back of the forearm here, you typically have a couple of options. And sometimes these veins will be a little bit more superficial.
Specific to the AC, if you can't really see it, if it's not bulging out, what you can do is kind of... Locate it and use your finger kind of move it from side to side to kind of try to feel that vein if it's kind of deep in there. Another option to consider if you can't really see much else is up on the shoulder area. Sometimes there's a pretty superficial vein, and right here you can see it in this example.
I'm going to point to it in just a minute, but you can see where the color is showing the vein right there underneath the skin. You'll just have to be very gentle. These will probably only take like a small catheter, like a 22. Another type of vein that you might come across is the one that might be on the back of the forearm. This is particularly in men. You'll see this one.
Unfortunately, this vein is often quite deceptive. It looks massive and something that you could easily get like an 18 or even bigger in there. But if you're seeing what I'm doing here, I'm doing a valve test and there are tons of valves in this vein.
And this is not unique just to my forearm here, but in general, I find that there are always usually a lot of valves in these veins. So guys, I hope you've enjoyed this video. I hope we've...
you know, talk to something new. If you have more tips for us or for anyone else who's watching, please let us know down in the comments. If you like this video, please give us a big thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. We'd love to have you and we'll see you all in the next one.