Most healthcare settings do not have unlimited space, but they do need to accommodate a wide selection of medical equipment, as well as patients and staff. This can sometimes mean being creative with your healthcare storage solutions, finding new ways to ensure you are able to provide the best quality of service.

1. Flexible healthcare storage solutions

Healthcare spaces include hospitals, laboratories, clinics and care homes. Each has its own equipment and storage requirements. Within these spaces, there may also be different departments, again with different needs. This means being able to take a standard cabinet or procedure cart and adjust it. This may require reconfiguring the drawers and shelves, changing the contents, or finding space under a counter or in a corner where it can be stored.

2. Mobility

Central to delivering flexibility is being able to move equipment where it is needed, then out of the way again when it is no longer necessary. This means you need wheels, preferably casters that can easily maneuver around corners and tight spaces but can also be locked in place when you need the cabinet or cart to be stable in a care delivery space.

3. Labeling

If you want to find things easily, then they need to be clearly labeled. While this means signs in corridors to direct you to the appropriate room (especially in larger, busier buildings), it also requires labels on cart drawers and cupboards so the contents can be easily identified. Color coding is one way to make a healthcare space easy to navigate. Red emergency crash carts are an obvious example.

4. Cleanliness

No matter how busy your healthcare space becomes, you still need to be able to keep it clean. The more nooks and crannies exist between equipment, the more areas are there where dirt can accumulate. You need as many smooth, flat surfaces as possible, preferably in materials that can easily be wiped down, such as steel. This is another area where wheels are useful, as equipment can easily be moved away from the wall so the space behind it can be cleaned thoroughly.

5. Security

Many healthcare settings use potentially dangerous medications on a regular basis, as well as sharp objects such as scalpels and syringes. They may also see a high turnover of people, from medical professionals to non-medical staff, such as administrators, in addition to patients and guests. This means that while all equipment and medication needs to be readily accessible in an emergency, there must be adequate security measures in place to ensure they do not fall into the wrong hands. Cabinets and drawers need to be locked and there need to be clear procedures defining who can access them and when they can be accessed.

Thinking carefully about how you use your healthcare space is not just about making the area look clean and tidy, but ensuring you are better able to provide optimum care to patients. Storage solutions need to be flexible, practical and, most of all, maximize the safety of everyone in that environment.