Informed Consent 🤔💥💉 "Aspiration" No Longer 🤔

Allison Patten's story highlights the critical issue of informed consent and medical autonomy in our healthcare system. As a nurse, she has witnessed firsthand the struggles that healthcare workers faced when making medical decisions for themselves and their patients during COVID19.

She speaks out against the idea that people were punished for rejecting medical interventions and emphasizes the importance of ensuring that individuals are fully informed and able to make their own choices regarding their medical care, with no consequence.

Allison has seen nurses who felt pressured to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, despite not feeling fully informed to the procedure. She also reports hearing doctors advise against the vaccine but not being allowed to provide exemptions.

Overall, Allison's story underscores the importance of informed consent and medical autonomy, as well as the need for healthcare providers to prioritize the safety and well-being of their patients.

Aspiration is most commonly performed during an intramuscular (IM) or subcutaneous (SC) injection, and is meant to ensure that the needle tip is located at the desired site, and has not accidentally punctured a blood vessel.

Although aspiration prior to intramuscular injection was standard practice until a few years ago, it is no longer recommended by the World Health Organisation and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.