Slight Miscalculation

As a nursing student who had barely passed bedbaths, I was on my second clinical rotation and had not yet mastered the concept that a unit was different from a cc. In the frenzied state that only a nursing student can know, I searched and searched for a syringe large enough for the 5,000 unit subcutaneious Heparin that I was scheduled to give. I went to a fellow student with a 60 cc Toomey syringe, the largest I could find, still perplexed about how to give the medication.

Eight years later, she’s still laughing and wondering how I ever made it through nursing school.

By Kathie DeMatteis, RN, BSN