As part of your protocol, your doctor has instructed you to use Rekovelle. Rekovelle comes in a multi-dose pen, so it comes in 72 units and 36 units, and in 12 units.

When you go to do this injection, you'll open the box and this plastic case will be inside. You'll have many needle tips, probably more than you'll need will be included, but that's okay. Just use what you need and then you'll discard the rest when you're finished with the pen.

You'll take the pen out and a needle tip out, and when you take the lid off of the top of the pen, you'll see the clear fluid at the top, which is the medication. There's numbers along the side of this pen, which indicate how much medication is in there, but you don't need to pay too much attention for these numbers. I'll show you how we're gonna measure this dose.

The first time you use this pen, you'll take the plastic off the top of the needle and twist it onto the top of the pen until it's nice and snug on top. Then you'll look in the window here and turn the dial up to the dose that you've been prescribed. Your nurses will tell you what your doctor has instructed. In this case, let's say you were prescribed 175. I turned it up until I saw 175 in the window, and now I'm ready to inject.

If you get a little bit excited and go past your dose when you're dialing with a Rekovelle pen, that's okay. You just turn it back down to the dose that you were prescribed until you see it here in the window. This is how you can tell how much you're injecting.

Then when you're ready to do your injection, you'll take the cap off of the top of the needle. There's still going to be a white sheath over the needle, so you'll pull that off as well, and you're ready to perform your injection.

To do the injection, you'll start by ensuring that the number on the pen is facing up so you can see it when you're doing the injection.

 Once you've put the needle into your skin, making sure that the number is facing up, you'll put your finger in the middle of this flower at the end of the pen and push down until you see the number in the window. Go all the way down to zero, and then you'll pull the needle out of your skin, and then you'll let go of your pen.

 Once you've finished your injection, you'll put the cap back on the needle and twist that off. Making sure to put the used needle into your biohazard bag or sharps container. Put the lid back on the pen and put the pen back in the fridge  for the next time that you're going to do your Rekovelle injection.

The next time you use Rekovelle, you'll do pretty much the same thing, but this time when you take the lid off the top. You'll take an alcohol swab and you'll clean the top of the pen, and then you'll twist your needle tip back on to the top of the pen once it's been cleaned.

Always remember that your Rekovelle pen is a multi-dose pen, so make sure that you save it in the fridge until you've used all the medication in the pen.

In the next part of this video, we'll learn how to landmark and inject a subcutaneous injection to deliver your Rekovelle medication.

 

How to Perform a Subcutaneous Injection

Now that you have your medication prepared, here's a video on how to perform a subcutaneous injection.

First, these injections are going to go into your abdomen. So you'll pick a spot two fingers away from your belly button and inject anywhere in your tummy.

The injection is going into that fatty layer of tissue right under the skin. So two fingers away anywhere in your tummy, just like this.
When you're doing your injections, you'll pick a spot, and then you'll rotate your sites. So try not to poke into exactly the same spot as you did already today or yesterday. Try to rotate the spots a little bit. Even a finger away is helpful.

When you're ready, you'll use an alcohol swab to clean the area that you're going to inject into, and then you'll give that a few seconds to dry. You'll take the cap off of your prepared needle and pinch your skin where you're going to do the injection. You'll inject at 90 degrees all the way in. Push the plunger on the syringe down until all of the medication has been delivered.

Then you can relax your skin and pull out the needle. A little bit of blood, a little bit of liquid might come out. That's okay. It's normal. You can use a tissue to hold the spot until the bleeding stops.

And then when you're done, make sure that you put your used needle into a sharps container or your medical waste bag.