Hey guys it's Tammy here and I've got our cat Patches with me today and you're
probably wondering why is there a cat in a nursing video?
Well that's because this little sweetie pie has been diagnosed with diabetes and
we're talking about blood glucose testing today and we're gonna do that
right after this. Welcome back my name is Tammy and this is NurseMinder and on
this channel we do everything nursing so if you're new here consider subscribing
below so that you get the next video when it's released. Wo we're not actually
talking about pet testing although I will share with you that I have learned
just as an aside for those of you who are also live with a pet that is
diabetic this little machine here the Accu CheK Guide ,I ordered it to see if
it would be comparable to the Pet Pro. Definitely comparable. The exact same
reading when I did a glucose test and way cheaper. So that's an aside. We're
going to talk more about testing on humans and how to use your glucometer. In
this case if the Accu Chek Guide. Now the the way your machine will work may look
a little different but the steps will be the same whether you're working at home
or in a clinical setting so let's get started. Now taking a blood glucose test
is not that difficult but there are some important things to note before we get
started. Number one is preparation, getting ready for the blood test. Number
two the lancing device and getting that ready to go then we're gonna look at
getting your glucometer ready to accept the blood, actually obtaining a blood
sample and then what to do after you get those readings. Now the first thing we
need to talk about is preparing your skin today. We're gonna focus on the
fingers jazz hands. Okay all funniness aside, preparing
your fingers for glucose tests means we need to clean them. Now this can be with
soap and water or you can use an alcohol pad or if
you're using the hand sanitizer to clean your hands that would be fine as well.
There is one important caveat if you're using alcohol swab or hand sanitizer you
must waste that first little blob of blood that you get because it can be
contaminated with the alcohol in the swabs and give you a false reading. Now
there's a few reasons why we want to clean our hands. One obviously we want to
get rid of any debris that might influence the reading you know that
chocolate bar you may have just had or you've just had some dinner and you
haven't cleaned your hands yet, there can be residue. Two, it helps to warm up the
hands and get the blood flowing so that you're you're more likely to get a nice
bleb we call it, a little bubble of blood to get your sample and then number three
super important is we're puncturing the skin and our skin is our first defense
against infection so we want to make sure that we are not accidentally
puncturing through a dirty area and potentially increasing the risk for
infection. So there's three really good reasons why to prepare your hands before
you do your test. Setting up your lancing device: let's first talk about the
elements of this particular device. We have a cap and this is where we're going
to pull off to insert our Lancet but it's also where we dial up the depth of
our injection. So it goes from a point five and it can go all the way up to a
five point five. Okay now they say if you're new to testing your sugars the
recommended start would be at a two so we're going to leave that out of two.
We're now going to pull off the cap and you'll see that there's a place to
insert here, we're going to insert until you hear it click. We're going to twist
this off and pull and it exposes the needle. Replacing our cap by lining up
the lines here.
The next thing we need to do is to prime the pen and we're simply going to press
the end here and what you're going to notice now is that this here is an
indicator light it will change to yellow. The Lancet is now loaded and ready to be
dispensed. So now that we've washed our hands we're going to get our Accu chek
reader prepared. We simply need to take one of our testing strips and we're
going to insert the chip into the machine. You'll just see it comes on. It's
now ready for our blood. We're going to want to select on the side and we'll
just select this finger here press firmly but not so hard and then depress
the ejector. Squeeze that finger. You may need to do what we call milking it to
get a reasonable size sample
and then apply it to the tip.
Now when you go to Canadadiabetes.ca they talk about the normal
values for blood sugar being between four and seven before you eat and then
two hours after you eat between five and ten. All right so I wanted to add on to
this video and do a little demonstration. Sometimes I find that our patients hands
are not really clean when we do a test and I want to see if that actually
impacts reading so I have a little syrup here I'm gonna put on my finger and I'm gonna
come back and test it after it's dry. So stay tuned for that.
Okay so there's just enough syrup right here I'm gonna put that on my finger and
it's all tacky now, let that dry and we'll come back and test this finger in
a minute. Okay so this finger got really sticky I did just kind of wake a wee bit
off but there is still a little bit there so let's see how this test will go.
All right so let's get our pen ready, remove the cap, insert your lancing
device so you hear the click, twist off and remove or re-establish the cap
lining up this hole with this line. I'm gonna dial up to two cuz that worked
well for me and prime my lancing device. It is now ready to go. Take my testing
strip insert it into the device, wait for that to tell me it's ready and it's
ready to go. Now this is the finger that I had the syrup on and I've kind of
cleaned it a little bit so let's see if this is gonna make a difference in my
reading. Pick one of the sides of the finger so the pad - avoid the center piece
we want to go on to the side - gentle pressure and depress. Now we're going to
milk or strip and I'm not going to get rid of this piece of blood because I
want to see if that sugar is going to make a difference. Bring it towards the
yellow piece and let's see what happens.
10.0 that's a significant change from 4.9 and that was just a little bit of
syrup left on my fingers. You can see it looks clean you can't tell that there
was syrup on there it feels smooth. So make sure you're cleaning your hands
before you take your test. Then of course we want to remove our cap, transition the
ejector cap forward, that just slid off my desk,
and then recap it. Clean all of this and you're done. thanks for watching I hope
you learned a ton because it was an awful lot of fun bringing this video to
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Until next time make it a great day :) Hey I know you're probably not ready to get
off your phone or go back to work just yet or maybe even turn the lights off to
go to sleep so why don't you spend a little bit more time here watching
another video.