hey this is Sarah with register nurse rn.com and today I'm going to show you how to give a subq injection a subq injection also known as a subcutaneous injection is an injection where that goes into the fat of the skin it's different than an intramuscular shot which is given in a muscle so I'm going to show you how that's done typically heprin insulin Lovenox those are given in the fat of the skin today we're going to give our mannequin Miss Smith a subq injection of two units of regular insulin and we're going to go in the abdomen you can go in the back of the arms you can go on the fat of the legs or in the abdomen but I'm going to show you how to do the abdomen first what you want to do is you want to get your medicine we've already drawn up two units of insulin you want to get a subcutaneous needle these should be in your clean hold you'll want to get your gloves do hand hygiene and get your alcohol prep then what you're going to do is you're going to go to the abdomen and you'll find the um umbilical area and you'll want to go 2 in away from the umbilical area and ask the patient where's the last time they gave you your shot because you don't want to go in the same area she told me that they went over here last time so this time we're going to go on this side so we're about 2 in away from the um umbilical area what we're going to do is we're going to clean the area for about 3 to 5 seconds with our alcohol prep in a nice circular motion keeping it um as clean as possible and this isn't a sterile procedure you can use clean gloves and we clean the area and then we're going to get our syringe going to take the cap off and um you're sort of just going to pinch the fat of the skin okay um so just pinch that and you're going to go in at a 90° angle like you're throwing a dart so what we're going to do is we're going to go in at 90° no need to aspray like how you do with the IM injection just going to give it take your needle out engage the safety and put it in the sharps and that is how you get a subq injection it's so easy and so simple it takes some technique but after you get it down it's easy so I hope you like this video if you want to watch a video on how to start an IV how to give an IM injection I have all those so be sure to check those out and thank you so much for watching and be sure to visit my website register nurse rn.com which is a nursing resource for you and all the nursing students out there thank you