re: Shots In Stomach Now Standard Procedure If You Are Hospitalized?

By all means, if you feel a need to refuse a medicine, then refuse it.

That being said, there is a host of reasons why it is given.

1. Even young healthy people are at risk for developing blood clots (dvt’s) when they lay around in bed for most of the day. Specifically, if your calf muscles are not worked as regularly as they should, blood tends to become stagnant and coagulate there.

2. Whenever you have a trauma, your clotting cascade does not behave the same way that it does when everything is stable. A patient is far more likely to develop a dvt after breaking a bone or having a surgery.

3. Many times, blood thinners are paused around hospitalizations for different reasons. These shots are simple, safe, and effective bridges for the time when the big guns like eloquis, plavix, and xeralto have to be stopped.

These are just the basics. If you are genuinely concerned about taking the shots, I would strongly encourage you to discuss it with your physician. I have seen catastrophic dvts in relatively young patients. If you speak with any physician or veteran nurse that works in critical care, I guarantee you that they have also.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a nurse just goes into a room and starts pumping chemicals into a patient without discussing why and what. It really does break down the patient/caregiver relationship when communication is not effective.

ETA: On a side note, I heard from a drug rep that the reason it is given in the abdomen is that the medication interacts better with the olmental fat which is specific to the abdomen/love handles part of the body. Also, the air bubble in the syringe is not to be purged. It is a nitrogen bubble that reacts with the med and the tissue as well. Full disclosure, I just heard that. It may not be 100% accurate.