Abstract
Novice nurses often find venipuncture more difficult to learn than other nursing skills. We developed an educational program for acquiring blood sampling skills involving expert nurses’ palpation skill for locating a venipuncture site. This pilot study aimed to conduct the educational trial to nursing students and to consider the improvements from nursing students’ self-evaluations. Fifteen nursing students were allocated to either the new program group (n＝7) or the conventional program group (n＝8). We conducted both programs and administered a nursing skills examination to the participants. Six participants (85.7%) in the new program group and two participants (25.0%) in the conventional group could select the appropriate venipuncture site, where was the same site that four expert nurses selected. The results showed a significant relationship between participation in the new program and selecting the appropriate venipuncture site during the examination (P＝.041). The participants’ achievement level in the conventional group was not regular and not completely “adequate,” as some of them could not palpate a vein. However, participants in the new program group achieved “adequate” or “excellent” results. Thus, future improvements can be made to nursing skills training based on this new program to improve knowledge of the anatomy of the cubital fossa and to provide more experience to nursing students when identifying various vein features through palpation.
