The describe-it-properly thing is so true. Half my early questions answered themselves once I actually wrote down what I did.

ready to miss a hundred times. arm arrives next week. let’s go.

Adding the nursing side of this because I’ve done more sticks than most of the med students on here will do before they qualify, and the biggest jump for me wasn’t technique, it was stopping the flinch when I felt resistance instead of pushing through blind.

On the arm you can’t feel that, so film really is your best mate for angle and depth. On real patients once you get there, the feel matters more than the visual. Different skill layered on top of the same basics.

Also, don’t skip the boring stuff. Tourniquet placement, vein palpation before you ever pick up the needle, patient position. I still see students rush straight to the stick and wonder why they missed a vein that was never going to cooperate in that position anyway.