A ride in the back of an ambulance is not a pleasant experience or a bucket list item for most people right? I have yet to meet someone who was excited to take a ride with me to the hospital on what is likely one of the worst days of their lives. It is all I see day in and day out at work as a paramedic.
Like most people, I like to stay organized. Not OCD, arrange my sock drawer, freak out organized but purposefully organized to effect the best job performance. When I can make your emergency go as smooth as possible it makes us both happy.
Here is where our product, the AmboCaddy, makes a difference for both you the patient and I the paramedic. Ambulance manufacturers spend 100’s of thousands of dollars to build a state of the art ambulance but the wow factor ceases once we open the drawers where we store the medical supplies like our drugs. Drugs that restart the heart, speed up the heart rate, slow down the heart rate, paralyze, improve breathing, make it so you don’t puke, and take away your pain type of drugs. These drawers are literally empty and it is up to us to figure out the best way to organize them.
Currently there aren’t any official commercial products available specifically for organizing ambulance drawers. We end up perusing the hardware store for generic plastic bins that cost a lot and aren’t very adjustable or meant for this purpose. Additionally, drug manufactures vary in the packaging, color coding the tops of the vials, and strength of the medication they provide us. It is an ever-changing chaotic system in a high stress medical application that is already lawsuit prone. We can fix this!
The AmboCaddy is designed by paramedics for paramedics. Each cube fits the most common medication vials like a glove and has an interchangeable velcro name tag that can be swapped when a new medication vial size is delivered from the manufacturer. The AmboCaddy also helps with spotting an error in your drug inventory at the start of the shift. An empty hole in an AmboCaddy medication tray is obvious to spot the need for a restock.
Is this a million dollar idea? We think not, but it does improve the world around us which is what we like to do as paramedics. And why hasn’t a product like this already hit the market? Frankly, it is expensive to create the plastic injection mold to mass produce a product. And a product that has a limited use in a specialized field usually doesn’t garner too much outside excitement so it is hard to get support. But why shouldn’t it? The chances that during our lives somebody we love will ride in an ambulance is pretty high. With a small donation to Kickstart the creation of the AmboCaddy we can all make the EMS world a better place.
Contact Information:
Chad McCoy
Email: leatherheads09@gmail.com
Website: www.kickstarter.com
