Safe Injection Practices
Make Sure You’re Injecting In The Right Place
The easiest places to inject are your glutes, quads or delts.
Injecting into these bigger muscles is much easier, but you still want to be careful to avoid any blood vessels or nerves.
GLUTES – Usually glutes are the largest and safest place to inject. Divide them into four, you want to inject into the upper, outer quarter. This is so you don’t hit or damage the sciatic nerve, which runs down the center of your glutes.
QUADS – Your quads are the next safest muscle to inject into after your glutes. You need to inject into your top outer thigh, half way between your knee and the top of your hip.
DELTS – Injecting into your delts can be a little scarier because the muscle is smaller. The injection should be given 3-5cms from the top, in the middle of your delt.
Cleaning Your Injecting Site Correctly Helps To Prevent Infections
- Always wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water before any injection.
- Wash your injecting site with soap and water as well, or clean the area with a single wipe of an alcohol swab. Scrubbing at your skin with the alcohol swab can spread bacteria around.
- Allow your skin about a minute to dry before injection.
- If using a multi-dose vial, swab the top of the vial before and after you draw.
Injecting Into A Muscle Step By Step
- Draw up with an 18 gauge needle, then swap to a 25 gauge needle for injecting.
- Insert the needle at 90 degrees to your injection site. It should go in most of the way (1" to 1.5").
- Draw the plunger back slightly to check you haven’t nicked a vein or artery. If you have, you will see blood in the syringe. If this happens remove the needle and apply pressure with a clean tissue or swab.
- Keeping your injecting less than 2ml of fluid into each site – helps reduce your risk of infection.
- Inject slowly – 10 seconds per 1ml is a good pace.
- Remove the needle and apply pressure with a clean tissue or swab.
- Replace the needle cap and dispose of used syringe and needles in a proper bin.
Get Some Medical Advice If You Have:
- any redness, pain, warmth, swelling or blistering at the injection site, or any feeling of chills or fever – you could have an infection or abscess
- a feeling like an "electric shock" when injecting, or any type of ongoing numbness or tingling – these could be signs of nerve damage