Buyer's Guides
Every storage trolley is a fixed stack of tray space. Choosing one well means choosing its height, its width and how that stack is split, in that order.
OMS Clinical Team
Product Specialists
Medical storage trolleys tend to be bought from the photograph. They all look alike: a white frame, a stack of clear trays and a shelf on top. The differences that matter only show up a month later, when the dressing packs will not fit in the trays, the trolley will not go under the worktop, or half the trays hold one item each while everything else is piled on top.
This guide works through the three decisions that actually separate one trolley from another: how tall it is, how wide its trays are, and how its tray space is split between shallow and deep. It uses the dimensions of the trolleys in our healthcare furniture range, but the same questions apply to any tray trolley.
The simplest way to understand a tray trolley is as a stack of tray space. A shallow tray is 8cm deep. A deep tray is 16cm, so it takes the room of two shallow ones. Each height of trolley holds a fixed amount of that space:
Everything else is a choice about how to divide it. At 80cm you can have five shallow trays, three shallow and one deep, or one shallow and two deep. All three add up to the same five units. At 110cm the options run from seven shallow trays through three shallow and two deep to one shallow and three deep.
Seeing it this way stops a common mistake, which is comparing trolleys by the number of trays. A trolley with seven trays does not hold more than one with four. It holds the same space cut into smaller pieces. The question is whether your stock suits many small compartments or fewer large ones.
The 80cm trolleys are designed to sit under a worktop when they are not in use, with a stainless steel handle to pull them out. That makes them a good fit for consulting rooms and treatment rooms where floor space is tight and the trolley only needs to come out for a procedure.
Before ordering one, measure the clearance under the worktop itself, not the height of the worktop surface. Rails, lips, drawer runners and pipework all take space, and a trolley that is a centimetre too tall has to live in the middle of the room.
The taller trolleys put the top shelf at a comfortable working height for a standing clinician, so the shelf becomes a surface to lay out a procedure on rather than just a lid. They run on 100mm castors with brakes on the front pair, which lets the trolley be wheeled to the bedside or couch and then locked in place so it does not roll while someone leans on it.
The choice between 101cm and 110cm is mainly about capacity: one more shallow-tray unit for the taller model. If the trolley will stand in a fixed spot and be stocked for a busy clinic, the extra unit is useful. If it has to pass under a shelf or a window sill, measure first.
The A3 trolleys are 56cm wide and take trays with an internal area of about 47 by 42cm. The A4 trolleys are 39cm wide, with trays about 31 by 42cm. Both are 52cm deep front to back, so the difference is entirely in width.
The narrow A4 trolleys earn their place in tight spaces: between a couch and a wall, in an alcove, or in a small room where a 56cm trolley would block a door. All of the A4 trolleys in our range are 101cm high and come as six shallow trays, two shallow and two deep, or three deep trays.
Where space allows, the wider trays are more forgiving. Boxed items such as dressing packs, catheter packs and boxes of gloves sit flat in an A3 tray, where in an A4 tray they may have to go in on their side or not at all. If your stock includes anything boxed, lay a few of the real items out on a table at 31 by 42cm before deciding.
Shallow 8cm trays suit small, separate lines that need to be found quickly: syringes, needles, cannulas, swabs, blood tubes, plasters and small dressings. Because there are more of them, each line can have its own tray, and staff reach straight for the right one.
Deep 16cm trays suit bulk and boxed stock: dressing packs, catheter and wound care packs, boxed gloves, bottles and anything stored in its original carton. Putting these in shallow trays means stacking them, and stacked stock is the stock that gets crushed, spilled or used out of date order.
Most clinics need both. A useful habit is to put the small, frequently used lines in the shallow trays at the top, where they are easy to see, and the bulk stock in the deep trays below.
A trolley that moves between patients and rooms needs to be on the cleaning schedule, not treated as furniture that gets wiped when someone notices. Follow your local infection prevention and control policy for how often and with what. Our infection prevention and control supplies checklist covers the wider picture, and the principles in our guide to cleaning healthcare seating apply to trolley surfaces as well.
None of the storage trolleys in our range has a key lock. That makes them suitable for consumables and equipment, but not for medicines that need to be locked away. Controlled drugs in particular have their own storage requirements, covered in our guide to controlled drugs cabinets.
They are also not resuscitation trolleys. An emergency trolley is equipped and checked according to your organisation's resuscitation policy, and should not double as general storage, where its contents can be borrowed and not replaced.
