Janet Ogundepo Medical practitioners have advised patients to always eat before taking injections to avoid dizziness, weakness or fainting. They said aside from the fear or phobia people have about injections, they are foreign bodies and require a certain amount of glucose in the body to prevent adverse reactions unrelated to the injections. The experts, a public health specialist and a senior nurse and midwife, also asserted that professional nurses administering intramuscular injections must ask the patient if and when they had their meal before giving the injection.
According to Medical News Today, injections consist of a needle and syringe and are used to deliver liquid medications, fluids or nutrients directly into a person’s body. Injections could be administered into a person’s vein (intravenous), muscle (intramuscular), skin or bone. Also, injections could be used to administer vaccines and other types of medications.
Administering intramuscular injections and vaccines are usually within the purview of the nurses. PUNCH Healthwise gathered that in some hospitals, nurses administering intramuscular injections do not ask patients whether they had eaten before giving them the injection. They mentioned feeling weak, dizzy, and almost fainting after receiving the injections when they had not eaten.
One of them, identified only as Blessing, noted that the nurse who administered the injection did not ask whether she had eaten or not. She added, “The doctor told me that.