3. Avoiding vein damage
Having found a safe site and prepared your drugs for injecting in a hygienic way, it is important to use the smallest needle you can. The smaller the hole and the less damage done to the inside of a vein, the longer it will last.

Put the needle into the skin parallel to the vein (with the tip pointing in the same direction as the blood flow) and then slide it into the vein, taking care to make sure you don’t go straight through it.

Pull back a little to check you are still in the vein. If you are using a tourniquet, release it and then inject slowly - the faster you inject the greater the risk of tearing the vein around the needle and of fluid escaping around the needle.

Once you have finished injecting, slide the needle out of the vein straight away and apply pressure to the site. This prevents bleeding and bruising.

All the drug is then out of the syringe - pulling blood back into the syringe and ‘flushing’ it back into the vein doesn’t get more out. Flushing causes extra damage to the vein by:

• Making the entry hole bigger
• Damaging the lining of the vein
• Causing extra clotting of blood and vein blockage by increasing turbulence.

It also helps if you understand about:

• Circulation
• Veins and arteries
• Finding a vein
• Injecting sites
• How veins collapse.

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