Longer is not always better!
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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient
2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer
3. Quick Wrap-up
Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.
Counselling Conundrum: "My Nurse Practitioner told me that since I am obese as a 45 year old, I need longer needles when I give myself insulin, 6 mL I think she said. Won't this hurt more?"
Concise Conclusion: Before we had more information, we thought having a larger belly meant your skin was also thicker. We now know that this is not true; everyone has similar skin thickness regardless of weight. There is generally no good reason to use anything other than a 4 mm/32 G pen tip with insulin or other medications that use pen tips. This is good news, as the injection will be as comfortable as possible, and no need to pinch while injecting!
Quick Wrap-up: Don't make your patients suffer more than they have to! 4 mm/32 G pen tips remove the risk of accidental intramuscular injection, which leads to perturbed absorption, more pain, and can cause hypo/hyperglycemia. Research shows skin is on average 2 mm thick. We never recommend anything longer than 4 mm, but technically up to 6 mm is considered acceptable. One note is that pinching is still recommended if your patient is underweight, or if they are 6 years old or younger.
Dive Deeper
We hope you have found this useful. Would appreciate your reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestions you can; it will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.
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