Clinical Skills - Capillary Blood Glucose Sample

Hi, I'm Ellis with LevelUpRN. And in this video, I'm going to be demonstrating how to obtain a capillary blood glucose sample or how to use a glucometer. I'm going to be using the steps from our Clinical Nursing Skills deck. So if you already have this deck, you can grab this card and follow along with the steps. If you don't have the deck and you're interested in getting one, head on over to LevelUpRN.com to check them out. In this skill, I have to use the help of a lovely assistant that I'm sure you will enjoy.
Hi, Ms. Kathy. We're going to be doing your blood glucose today. So do you have a preference on finger that you'd like me to stick?
Maybe my middle one this time.
All right, that sounds good. So I'm just going to go ahead and clean that with an antiseptic swab.
All right.
While that's drying I'm just going to have you position your hand a little bit down right here for me while I prepare my equipment. So I'm going to put some gloves on just to protect myself.
[silence]
I'm going to turn on my glucometer. The first thing that your glucometer wants from you is a test strip. So I'm going to take out my test strip, insert it into my glucometer. If it's inserted correctly, it will indicate that it wants a drop of blood. So my next step will be to remove the safety on my lancet. And they sometimes just pull off or sometimes they break off. All right, I'm just going to push this directly against the lateral side of her finger, not the finger pad itself, the lateral side. I'm going to push firmly and push the button. That ejected a little needle into her skin. That was really lateral. I'm going to wipe that first drop of blood away. I can squeeze just a little bit to get a bit more blood. And then there's a little indicator on the test strip itself where it wants you to touch the blood, and it will just suck the blood right up. It will count down and it will display your patient's blood sugar.
What is it today?
It's 97.
Oh, yeah. I don't need any insulin then.
No insulin today. I'm going to put a piece of gauze or cotton ball. And if you could just hold that for me. While she holds pressure on that for me, I'm going to go ahead and take my gloves off and discard my equipment, making sure that this lancet ends up in a sharps box.