The result of therapy largely depends on the thoroughness of the instructions of the attending physician. Many drugs are most effective and safe in the form of an injection, and therefore patients are forced to visit the treatment room at the clinic throughout the course of treatment. What can be inconvenient due to reduced health or a busy schedule.
The way out of this situation is to learn how to inject yourself on your own. Having figured out how to properly inject yourself in the thigh intramuscularly, and having gained practical skills, you can follow the doctor’s instructions yourself at any convenient time. Our article will help you with this. Let's figure out how to do an intramuscular injection in the thigh ourselves.
Preparation for the procedure
Preparing for an injection is an important part of the procedure. All necessary items must be in maximum accessibility, and all hygiene requirements must be strictly observed.
Before you inject yourself in the thigh, you need to prepare:
- a bottle with an antiseptic or disposable wipes soaked in alcohol;
- cotton or cotton pads;
- sterile syringe;
- a file for opening an ampoule;
- ampoules with the drug.
The solution for injection should be at room temperature. Therefore, if the drug was stored in the refrigerator, the ampoule must be heated by holding it in your hand.
The last stage of preparation is washing hands with soap, and then subsequent processing with an antiseptic. The alcohol solution, which kills almost all known bacteria, has maximum efficiency. But you can also use a water-based hand spray.
Syringe preparation
After processing the hands, you need to take a file and make cuts on the narrowest part of the ampoule or at a special mark. After this, the ampoule turns into cotton wool and the glass breaks with a sharp movement.
The packaging with the syringe is torn, the protective cap is removed from the needle, the drug is drawn into the syringe. Then the protective cap is put on the needle, and air is released from the cavity of the syringe. To put on a cap is necessary so as not to spray the medicine around the room.
An important point is the choice of syringe. Regardless of the volume of fluid injected, the volume of the syringe should not be less than 5 ml. The fact is that its size correlates with the length of the game. Therefore, 2 ml syringes are only suitable for subcutaneous injection.
Breeding drugs
Some drugs require prior dilution. The manufacturer can release the medicine in the form of two ampoules: in one there will be a drug in the form of a tablet or powder, in the other - a liquid for diluting the medicine. In this case, the preparation of the drug is necessary as follows:
- file and break both ampoules;
- draw a solution for dilution into the syringe;
- fill with a solution an ampoule with a medicine;
- after the powder or tablet has dissolved, fill the syringe with medicine.
In a similar way, a solution of the drug is mixed with an anesthetic, which eliminates pain before and after the injection. But in this case, it is important to take into account the risk of an allergic reaction to the analgesic component.
After this, you can start the injection, but before that you need to figure out how to properly inject yourself in the thigh.
Where to put the injection
Intramuscular injection is most often performed in the gluteal region. For this, the buttock is visually divided into four equal parts, and the injection is placed in the upper outer corner. This method is used in any medical institution where manipulations are performed by patients not on their own.
When it comes to injecting yourself, it’s best to give an injection in the thigh. This method is convenient in that a person puts an injection in the most convenient position and gets the opportunity to control the process, for example, the angle of introduction of the needle into the body. It remains only to learn how to inject himself in the thigh .
Equipment
After the preparatory phase is completed and the medicine is drawn into a syringe, you need to decide on the point where to put the injection. It is allowed to do intramuscular injection into the thigh from the outside of the leg, into the lateral broad muscle of the thigh, which is located along the entire length of the side of the leg to the patella.
The needle is inserted with confident rapid movement strictly at right angles to the surface of the leg. It must be entered into ¾ lengths completely and only then slowly inject the drug. Recommendations for the speed of administration of the drug are usually indicated in the instructions for the drug. A good marker that the drug was administered too quickly is a deterioration in a person’s well-being, such as weakness or dizziness.
After emptying the syringe, it is necessary to pull out the needle with one motion, while pressing the injection site with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol or other antiseptic solution.
Injection pain
Even if a person knows well how to inject himself in the thigh, he may face pain. And the measures that need to be taken to combat pain depend on the cause of its occurrence:
- It is recommended to use imported syringes that have thinner needles. Injection with such a syringe will be almost imperceptible.
- Injections with some drugs are quite painful, regardless of how well the technique is used. In this case, you can dilute the drug with a solution of Lidocaine, but it is important to remember that anesthetics can cause an acute allergic reaction, so it is undesirable to use them at home.
- Often pain occurs due to the wrong angle of insertion or removal of the needle from the body. In both cases, the angle should be exactly 90 degrees.
- Immediately after the injection, it is recommended to firmly press a cotton wool or alcohol-soaked napkin to the injection site. After the blood stops, you need to gently massage the thigh, which will improve the process of absorption of the drug into the bloodstream.
- Often the pain occurs at the end of the course of treatment, when injections are repeatedly placed in the same place. To avoid this, you need to alternate the injection site, and when hematomas appear, use the means to get rid of them. For example, heparin ointment.
Therefore, before you make an injection in the thigh yourself, you need to carefully read the instructions for the drug and once again recall the basic rules for setting the injection yourself.
Fear of an injection
The main problem that people face before giving an injection to their own thigh is psychological discomfort before inserting a needle into their body. This entails the following problems:
- if a person cannot relax, his muscular system is tense, it will be more difficult to insert a needle, most likely, a person will encounter pain;
- with intense tension and fear, it will be difficult for a person to coordinate his actions enough to insert the needle at the most correct (right) angle.
There is only one way to get rid of fear before giving an injection to your own thigh: try to relax the muscle you injected as much as possible and insert the needle with a confident motion. After the first successful experiment, the excitement before the procedure will significantly decrease, and the next time there will be no fear of an injection.
Injection posture
In order for the muscle to be relaxed, and the injection does not cause pain, you need to take a comfortable posture for injection. For the injection into the thigh muscle, the most convenient are the sitting and standing position.
Standing, you need to transfer weight to the other leg so that the thigh muscles that are injected are relaxed. In a similar way, it is also worth doing when setting yourself an injection while sitting.
Common mistakes
Despite the fact that the instruction on how to inject yourself in the thigh is extremely simple and understandable, often people make the same mistakes, inattentive to the recommendations and instructions.
- It is strictly forbidden to use the same needle several times, to touch its surface until it is introduced into the body.
- The injection site should be alternated to avoid hematomas.
- When working with a new drug that has not been used before, it is better to put the first injection of the course in the treatment room. In the event that intolerance of the components of the drug occurs, the medical professional will be able to quickly take the necessary actions. In practice, this happens extremely rarely, but one should not underestimate the seriousness of such a situation.
- You can not spontaneously change drugs to analogues, vary the dosage or degree of dilution of the drug. Any changes to the doctor’s initial recommendations can only be done by the doctor himself in person.
In conclusion, it should be said about the disposal of the syringe and ampoule after the injection. A protective cap should be put on the needle, and the broken ampoule should be wrapped with paper, for example, with a syringe package. So you can protect yourself and other people from the risk of injuring yourself on the glass or the tip of a medical needle.
Thus, knowing the injection technology, having studied the instructions, useful tips and photos (how to inject yourself in the thigh, you now understand), it’s quite possible to independently follow the doctor’s instructions in conditions that are comfortable for yourself: at home, without long waiting times in line for treatment office and adjusting your schedule for the nurse’s work time.