Injection and Drip at Home in Lahore

Getting an injection or an IV drip at home is one of the most common requests we receive in Lahore — families search for it as "ghar par injection" or simply "drip at home". For most prescribed courses it is a completely reasonable thing to do, and it saves a weak patient a daily round trip through the city. But it is a clinical procedure, and how it is done matters.

What can and cannot be given at home

The rule is simple: a nurse administers what a doctor has prescribed, in the dose and by the route the doctor has written. That covers a great deal.

• Intramuscular and subcutaneous injections — antibiotics, painkillers, anti-emetics, vitamin B12, insulin, prescribed hormone injections
• IV fluids for dehydration after vomiting, diarrhoea or fever
• IV antibiotic courses started in hospital and continued at home after discharge
• Prescribed supportive infusions between hospital treatment cycles

What should not happen at home is a nurse deciding what to give. If someone offers to "put up a drip" for general weakness without a prescription, that is not a service, it is a risk. Fluids are a medicine, they can be given at the wrong rate, and in a patient with heart or kidney disease the wrong drip can do real harm.

What happens during a home visit

1. 1The nurse checks the prescription against the medicine you have bought — name, strength, expiry, and that the route matches what was written.
2. 2They take basic observations: pulse, blood pressure, temperature. This is not a formality; it is how a reaction is spotted later.
3. 3Hands are washed and gloves put on. The site is cleaned properly and given time to dry, which is the step most often skipped and the one that prevents infection.
4. 4For an IV, a fresh sterile cannula is inserted and secured, and the drip rate is set to what was prescribed — not opened wide to finish faster.
5. 5The nurse stays for the duration of the infusion, watching for reaction, swelling at the site or discomfort.
6. 6The cannula is removed, the site checked and pressure applied. Sharps go into a proper container and leave with the nurse.
7. 7What was given, at what time and any reaction is written down for your doctor.

A drip typically takes one to three hours depending on the volume and the prescribed rate. A nurse who wants to leave the cannula running and come back later is cutting a corner that occasionally kills people — do not accept it.

What to have ready before the nurse arrives

• The prescription or discharge summary, in the original or as a clear photo
• The prescribed medicine or IV fluid, bought from a pharmacy — check the expiry yourself
• A comfortable place for the patient to sit or lie for up to three hours, with a small table beside it
• A hook, curtain rail or stand the drip bag can hang from, about a metre above the patient
• A list of the patient’s other medicines and any known drug allergy

Signs something is wrong

Tell the nurse immediately — and if the nurse has already left, call us — if you see swelling, coldness or increasing pain around the cannula site, a rash or itching anywhere on the body, sudden breathlessness, shivering with a rising temperature, or the patient becoming unusually drowsy. These are uncommon, and all of them are manageable if they are noticed early, which is precisely why the nurse stays for the full infusion.

What it costs and how to book

Injections and drips are charged per visit. A prescribed course — seven days of injections, for instance — is quoted as a course at a lower rate per visit than seven separate calls. Sterile consumables are included; you buy the medicine against the prescription.

We provide this across Lahore 24 hours a day, and in central areas a nurse is usually with you within the hour. Send a photo of the prescription on WhatsApp to 0302 5286596 and we will confirm what is needed and what it will cost before we set out.