You've got a patient who needs a drug, or fluid, or both, so you need a route in. There are two: intravenous (IV), straight into a vein, and intraosseous (IO), into the bone marrow. Intra- means inside. Venous means vein. Osseous means bone. That means IV is inside the vein, IO is inside the bone.
IV is first-line. It's faster to start in most patients, and it's the route everybody already thinks of. IO is your fallback when peripheral IV access fails or is not realistic: a crashing patient, collapsed veins, an arrest. Both routes dump into the central circulation. The bone marrow is a rigid, non-collapsible space, so it drains into the bloodstream almost as fast as a peripheral vein does. That holds even when the patient's veins have already shut down from shock.
As an AEMT, you can start both. You can also maintain a non-medicated IV line, plain fluid, running. What you cannot do is hang a medicated infusion, a drip with a drug in it. That's a Paramedic skill. Keep that line in your head. It's going to come back twice more in this lesson.
Quick check
An AEMT has an IV line running on a patient. Which line can the AEMT maintain?
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