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Training Nurses With Virtual Veins
meganthom writes "UK Haptics is developing a virtual hand to help nurses learn how to draw blood and put in IVs in a realistic manner. Though plastic models are currently used, these do not give new nurses the 'feel' for how much pressure to apply to the needle, and they cannot alert the nurse about pain. The system currently under development, which uses haptics, would make the learning experience considerably more realistic, even telling the nurse when too much pressure was applied."
He's not aiming for veins (which would be pretty pointless anyway, since they take blood back to the heart, not out to the cells locally) he's distributing the anesthetic around the area to assure the nerves are blocked. It's a subcutaneous injection (or intramuscular or intraligament - my dentist sometimes uses "intralig" injections on me), not intravenous or arterial.
Did he apply a topical before the injection? That usually helps a bit.
As a retired paramedic who has stuck needles into literally thousands of veins, I can tell you that this kind of tool is of limited value. Even if they can exactly mimic the tactile sensations of a needle penetrating skin and then entering a vein, that's only part of the issue. A much bigger obstacle to be overcome is the social indoctrination that you don't go around stabbing people and making them bleed. Once most nursing/medical/paramedic students learn to just DO IT, their problems drop way off.
The traditional training method of having students practice on each other has a lot to reccommend it as a means of overcoming such reluctance. Anyway, a practice model would only get used in class a few times per student, and then they will be out assaulting real patients anyway. Increased training costs for limited benefit.
I don't give blood anymore for this reason. I had a bad experience a few years ago with a new nurse who put the needle through the blood vessel in my arm, and into the nerve in my elbow. It took 6 months before my hand felt normal and regained full strength after that. I've read plenty of tales of folks who didn't regain full feeling after an experience like that, and don't want to take the risk of it ever happening again.
If these things can help them learn to take blood without injuring folks like me, I'm all for it. I still probably won't ever give blood again, but if this became commonplace and I was assured of a really well-trained nurse, I *might* consider it..