Custom Medicine Trolley with Pump & Bottle Carrier
This was work for a young lady who has quite complex medical needs. She is fed entirely by a tube below her stomach and is connected to it 24/7. She takes a lot of medications and struggles with malnutrition and anaemia, which causes a lot of fatigue and pain.
She needed a storage trolley for daily use that could protect the medicines and equipment, and that could be kept clean and sterile. She also needed a replacement wheeled carrier for her pump and feed bottle.
The Challenge
To minimise her daily workload, she likes to keep all of her medicines and other bits and pieces that she needs to use on a daily basis close at hand. She had a trolley she had sourced herself, but the drawers were open, it was not very robust, it was not at the right height for her to work with, and most importantly it was not easy to keep sterile. She may need to move to having her feed and medication directly injected into her bloodstream, which would mean even more severe requirements for keeping the equipment she’s using sterile.
She also had her pump and feed bottles attached to a wheeled stand that goes with her everywhere. This was something she also made from an NHS supplied item. It was falling apart and the original NHS item was no longer available. It is with her 24/7 even when she goes out in the car, shopping etc. It needs to be robust and reliable.
So she approached REMAP and asked for our help to make more suitable items for her.
The solution
The Trolley
The solution was to take a standard off-the-shelf stainless steel catering trolley from Amazon. The trolley was chosen because of its size and construction, which lent itself to modification. Into that have been fitted a number of drawers. These are off-the-shelf plastic drawers, again from Amazon or Temu, sold for general storage in kitchens, on dressing tables, etc. Both myself and the client spent a lot of time looking for sets of drawers that would fit into the space and maximise the storage space. In fact the client did most of the searching until she actually came up with a short list of options including these. I then spent some time with different suggestions she came up with, modelling them on the computer to see how they fitted into the trolley, and this is the result that we ended up with.
As she is regularly visited by young relatives it was necessary to put locks on four of the drawers for her to put her more dangerous medicines and other things in. The drawers are made of relatively thin clear styrene plastic, and are quite flexible in places so I’ve had to put some reinforcing bars in them to make them stronger and to mount the locks into. The locks are standard ‘filing’ cabinet type barrel locks. Some of the drawers have had additional dividers fitted. The client determined these sizes for her particular needs.
She also wanted additional space on the side, and that is provided by this pivot-up shelf. The hinges are standard, commercial locking shelf brackets, again in stainless steel. They just flip down and flip up, and she’s got more working space when she needs it. She also requested a pole up the side on which she could fit her feed bottles if need be. That again is stainless steel. These hooks for the bottles can be positioned as she needs them.
Finally, the back and sides where clad with polycarbonate sheets. These are wipe clean and can be removed if needed for additional cleaning/access.
Pump & Bottle Carrier
For this exercise, we looked at four-footed walking sticks, to which castors could be fitted. We tried several sizes and types because it has to be stable, but it also has to fit into the footwell of her car when she goes out. She lifts the whole system across and into the footwell when she gets in the car. A small number of sticks were obtained and the best one chosen.
The walking stick was fitted with adapters to allow the mounting of off-the-shelf casters. 100mm, four-inch diameter casters were used because of the ease at which they roll across different surfaces.
The pump is attached with the clamp it is provided with. There is a carabineer-style hook for the feed bottle to hold it securely in place. There is a strap to stop it swinging about, the strap was made by the client. The parts were produced by 3D printing – for the record using glass reinforced TBD plastic. What is not shown here is the tube between the bottle and the pump that she needs.
The casters I bought were relatively inexpensive. It turned out they were actually quite crudely made, and the bearings and metal covers that they had over the wheels rattled when used on pavements or other uneven surfaces. The client was concerned that having this thing rattling behind her would draw attention to her, which, although she’s not particularly self-conscious, she didn’t welcome.
Rather than buy another set of more expensive casters (which may not necessarily any quieter) the bearings in these casters were replaced, and the rattling metal covers replaced with plastic covers, colour-coordinated of course!
The benefit
The client is now able to manage her daily medical needs with a storage trolley that has sufficient organised space, extra work area and is at a comfortable height. Most importantly the storage is safe and can be kept sterile. The new pump and bottle carrier allows her to move around indoors and out.
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