BackgroundObedience to the excellent standards of nursing practice is the ultimate attitude to develop patient outcomes and avoid nursing process related-infections. Inserting the peripheral intravenous cannula is the utmost mutual aggressive technique achieved in nursing care for patients. Therefore, nurses must have adequate knowledge and practice to ensure the procedure’s success.ObjectivesTo determine the peripheral cannulation technique evaluation among nurses working in the emergency departments.MethodsThis descriptive-analytical study was conducted at Maternity and Pediatric Teaching Hospitals in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq on 101 randomly selected nurses, from 14th December 2021 to 16th March 2022. Data collection was carried out through a structured interview questionnaire aimed to gather the nurses’ general characteristics and an observational checklist to assess the nurses’ pre, during and post practices regarding peripheral cannulation technique.ResultsAccording to general practice, 43.6% of nurses had an average level, 29.7% had a good level, and 26.7% had a poor level of practice in the evaluation of the peripheral cannulation technique. Our study also showed a positive association between socio-demographic characteristics of the studied samples with the overall level of practice regarding peripheral cannulation technique.ConclusionsNurses were not practised peripheral cannulation technique appropriately; however, half of the nurses’ had an average level of practice, although their practices were not followed the standard protocols.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-023-01349-y.