2025 Volume 24 Pages 27-36
Objectives: This study aims to identify the effects of bracing the index finger when cutting ampoules on the cut surface of the ampoule, and the presence or absence of a cut.
Methods: Thirty-four nursing students performed ampoule cutting using 2ml and 5ml ampoules with and without securely bracing index finger. The sharpness of cut surface of the ampoule, the presence of incision wounds, and joint angles were measured. The Wilcoxon-signed rank test was used to compare the cut surfaces of the ampoules. The incidence of incisions was calculated as a percentage. The correlation between the cut surface of the ampoule and joint angles was calculated using the correlation coefficient.
Results: The cut surface of the ampoule was significantly less sharp with index finger braced for both 2ml and 5ml ampoules (p<.01). There were no incisions in an index finger braced group, while in the no-index finger braced group, glove tearing occurred in 11.8% of the 2ml ampoules and 17.6% of the 5ml ampoules. Further, finger incisions occurred in 2.9% of the 2ml ampoules. For the 5ml ampoules with index finger braced, the smaller the left-right difference in joint angle, the surface of the ampoules was less sharp (r= .46, p<.05).
Discussion: It was suggested that bracing the index finger when cutting the ampoules reduced the sharpness of the cut surface and the incidence of cuts suffered by students who were not used to cutting ampoules.
