In the last week, I attempted 23 IV starts. The one I managed to get in was later determined by the MD to be not good enough for his purposes...so essentially, I batted .000. I did get one successfully started the week before, and on a psychotic hallucinating patient, no less. So for the whole month, I'm 1 for 24, or 4.166% percent successful.
My IV skills are not improving despite hell AND high water.
I decided that it's time I broke down and took a LVN IV Therapy course. So I went to the BVNPT website and found local approved course providers, and messaged them for more information. I suppose since I'm not going for BVNPT certification, I could take a course that wasn't approved by them. But I consider the fact that a course has BVNPT approval as meaning that the course content is up to snuff.
That is the downside to working in psych: we almost rarely start IVs. Psych-medical sees more IVs than the rest, but even then, it's nowhere as many as you'd see on your typical med-surg floor.
IMs are no problem: I can give an IM to a patient under pretty much any conditions. And have.
So while I wait to hear back from the courses about enrollment, I'll be pulling out all my IV books and reading them...again. I wish they sold an IV practice kit that didn't involve a human body part.
