I remember the second time I was back in the hospital to once again practice my profession, breaking an ampoule glass is one of the tasks I dread. It’s just that the last time I did correctly break an ampoule glass was during my return demonstration way back in College. Those first few days, my whole body seemed to freeze and can’t even move both my fingers and hands once I held one. The major reason was that I was scared I might crush it for another few reasons:

• injure my fingers
• waste my patient’s medicine and might not afford to buy one (lol)
• afraid to commit mistakes

Whatever reasons I had that time, as a nurse, I have no excuse and choice but should learn and master it since it will be forever part of my daily routine. Thankfully, I did. However, there are really times when I can’t avoid committing mistakes and crush the whole ampoule glass(lol) like how thin the glass material of Oxytocin is made of which I should be really very careful or else I’ll crush everything (a lot of times actually); Tramadol on the other hand, may be small but is harder than I can ever imagine, I ended up passing it to a co-worker to open it for me; but my most favorite is Citilcholine since it has an attached ampoule cutter most of the times. So, I made sure to come up with a technique for every dilemma. I got two actually–one for those hard ampoules and one for the fast and safe opening, which I’ll be sharing below.

Ampoule Glass

A small sealed glass used chiefly to contain a hypodermic injection solution. Ampoules are commonly made of glass, although plastic ampules do exist.

Parts of an Ampoule Glass

The technique I’ll be sharing with you on how to break an ampoule Glass is from a co-nurse. Watch the video below regarding Easiest and Safest Technique to Break an Ampoule Glass.

There are still actually a lot, some use a vial, instead of a syringe barell, others would just use a hard material and slam it at the conical tip. My second technique I use for the hard ampoule glass, on the other hand, may not be ideally acceptable but it works for me.

I hope the video above can help you all, nurses.