Finger-stick Blood Glucose Test: Special Considerations (Nursing)

00:04 Let's visit some special considerations when we're talking about obtaining a blood glucose.

00:10 So there's something we call control tests.

00:13 Now these need to be completed at least every 24 hours for your meter to work properly.

00:19 Also, anytime that you open up a test strip bottle, we need to make sure we place our initial when we open it and the date of expiration because these test strips can expire.

00:31 Also, if we end up opening up any control vials as well to run our tests, we need to date those as well.

00:39 Just know that test strips usually expire between about 6 months from opening and those control vials will expire about 3 months from opening.

00:48 We of course, want to make sure we are not using expired equipment because this can skew our results.

00:54 Now, if you're talking about using a blood glucose meter, especially when we're talking about the acute care facilities, you're typically going to have to use this meter on multiple patients.

01:05 So it's important that we can clean this between use.

01:08 Now some patients that require a blood glucose may be in isolation precautions.

01:14 So follow your facilities' policy on how you are to do that to make sure we don't spread infection.

01:21 So this could be that we place the meter in a bag for example, while we take it in that patient's room, and disinfect properly.

01:30 Now supplies can be stored in a common area and used for all clients, kind of like we talked about for the meter.

01:36 However, once you enter into a patient's room, please only bring the supplies necessary for that particular client.

01:44 Because once we bring strips or extra lancets in the room, it can only be used for that client and we don't want to waste extra supplies.

01:53 Thanks for watching today.