 Welcome to Nursing School Explained and this video on how to accurately measure a blood pressure. Now, as you know, assessment always comes before intervention. And if we do not have an accurate blood pressure measurement, the patient's treatment might not work. We might over or under treat them. So an accurate measurement of blood pressure is super important in the clinical setting or in any patient care setting as well as at home for patients. Because if patients tend to get anxious at the doctor's office or at the hospital, then many times the recommendation is for them to keep a log of their home blood pressure readings. So then after an average of maybe two weeks, the provider can take a look at these readings and come up with a treatment plan for this patient. So the most important thing is to have an accurate measurement of that blood pressure so that all the treatment that is based on these readings will be accurate and successful for this patient. So let's look at this. I have divided it into before, during and after the blood pressure management. So before, we always want to make sure it's the same time a day because our activity level typically is a little bit different in the morning and at night. So if we keep it at the same time, we get the most accurate measurements. Many times in the hospital that's not possible because we measure blood pressures much more often than once a day. But for home measurement, this is very important. And then we need to have a properly sized cuff. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. I see that many times in the pediatric setting where patients come in different sizes where if the cuff is not properly fitted, the blood pressure will be off. I guarantee it to you, but that also applies to the adult population. So we need to make sure that the circumference of the cuff meets the needs of the patient in terms of the width of their arm but also their length of the cuff needs to be accurate. And I have a separate video where I just go about how to actually manually measure a blood pressure about how to measure the cuff properly. And then the machine needs to be calibrated. At the hospital, that is very easily done, usually by the biomedical department. They service the machines on a regular basis, but at home make sure that you know how the monitor works as well as how it's calibrated and it might require you to calibrate it once a year or whatever the recommendations are from the manufacturer. It's very important because otherwise, again, the reading will be off. It is recommended not to have any activity five minutes prior to measuring a blood pressure because sitting, walking upstairs, any of that will get the heart rate and the blood pressure up and then the reading will be accurate. And that also includes eating and drinking, actually. And then certainly we want to have no smoking or caffeine consumption for about 30 minutes prior to taking the blood pressure because, again, those can give us inaccurate readings. The patient is also recommended to have an empty bladder because that can kind of make him a little bit anxious or a little bit more stressed out if there's pressure in that bladder region and it can, again, throw off the blood pressure reading. And this, again, is super important. The cuff needs to be on a bare skin. Please do not ever put it over the clothing, no matter how thin or thick that clothing is. It will possibly give you an abnormal reading. I see that sometimes the ground gets kind of crunched up underneath the blood pressure cuff if the patient is hospitalized and, first of all, it's uncomfortable because it squeezes and the wrinkles might actually cause some skin damage to the patient but also you're running the risk of having an inaccurate reading. And then over here, during the procedure, we want to make sure that the patient doesn't talk or move so be nice and still. Both feet are on the ground. If they are sitting down, if they are laying down, that's a different story. We're not going to have that. And the back needs to be supported also that mostly applies to when they're sitting up in a chair because, again, the strain of holding themselves up, maybe they've had some sort of surgical procedure or they're not able to keep themselves in an upright position, that strain might elevate their blood pressure reading. And so once we have completed our blood pressure recording and we were aware of what needs to happen before and after, we can record the findings. So in the hospital setting that means in the medical record, so we can see the trends that the patient has or if the patient is at home in their home log so that afterwards they can take it to their provider to follow up appointments and the treatment can either be checked or changed or initiated depending on the readings. So thank you for watching this very important video on how to accurately measure a blood pressure because, again, I cannot emphasize enough how important that is in the assessment portion of the nursing process because everything that we do will depend on these readings. And if just a couple of things are off here, we definitely will have an inaccurate reading and then the treatment will be based on some wrong information and we don't ever want that to happen because patient safety is our number one concern. So thank you for watching this video right here on Nursing School Explained. Please also check out my Instagram channel for study tips and announcement of new videos. And I'll see you soon right here on Nursing School Explained. Thanks for watching.