Injections - example 1

NOTE: This example is only for demonstration of the flexibility and usefulness of the Factor-Label method! Insulin should always be administered with the proper insulin syringe - any other method of administration may place you in violation of your health care institution policy or at legal risk.

This first example is for insulin NPH 30 units.  This is a no-brainer, right? Just get an insulin syringe and draw it up. Oh, I didn't mention that this is a home visit. Or that the patient is out of syringes. And when you look in your handy supply bag you don't have any insulin syringes - you do have several 3cc syringes, a couple TB syringes and a smattering (is that a word???) of various size needles.

So, can we give the injection? And which syringe and needle do we use? Let's start at the beginning - what are we actually going to give the patient? We're going to inject a liquid - liquids are measured in volume, so what we want to know is how many cc's (or ml's) to give the patient.
 

 

 

Looking at the insulin vial, we see U100 NPH. We should know that U100 means 100 units per cc. If not, reading the fine print on the vial reveals that. We have our 3 necessary pieces of information:

Ordered dose - 30 Units

Available dose - 100 Units

Available form - 1 cc

 

Our first factor will be the thing we know that contains the same unit as what we want to know, writing it so the unit is in the same position :

 

 

Next multiply by the ordered dose writing it so the unit is opposite our first factor :

 

 

It's obvious we aren't going to have any left over units, so cancel & solve :

 

 

We know how much to give - 0.3ml, which syringe do we use? Looking at the 3 cc syringe it's graduated with 5 marks for each cc. So how many marks would we give? Yeah, I know you don't need this factor-label stuff to do this part - but remember the whole point to these pages is practicing using the method .... So start with what we want to know :

 

 

And write what we know so the corresponding unit is in the same position :

 

 

And multiply by how much we want to give :

 

 

And cancel & solve :

 

 

Can we give 1.5 marks ? Well, maybe ... with a good eye, but since the TB syringe is graduated with 10 marks per cc (0.1cc per mark) it's a much better choice. Which needle to choose ? Small - 25gauge X 1/2" or 27gauge X 1/2" are good choices.

 

 

©1997-2006 Dale Sampson, RN