Some time ago, one of our very best customers asked us to come up with a new, custom first aid bag to address an injury they see often. One of their drivers had been injured by eye debris while on the road. Would it be possible, they asked, if we could develop a eye debris removal kit that drivers could carry with them in their vehicles to avoid this sort of situation in the future?
Creating custom first aid kits in one of our greatest challenges, yet probably the most fun. We also happen to be very good at it.
It brings out the junior scientist in all of us. I called the manufacturer of the eye lubricant we use to find out what storage temperatures they recommend. Turns out they tested in the 50–80-degree range, and so have no idea how it will react to extreme cold and heat.
So, right this moment, I have some eye lubricant in my freezer, testing how well it will hold up in cold winters in a glove box. (For my own future reference: thirty degrees doesn’t seem to be a problem, which is how low my boat freezer gets. But that’s not cold enough to test for winters in the Northwest, so next it’s off to stay in a friend’s freezer at even lower temperatures.) I’ve also got some sitting on a metal platform, with heat indexes here in the southeast up to 114 today. We’ll see how that goes.
Eye lubricant aside, we also added an eyewash cup and some sterile saline to this new “bag,” (even though it’s a tube) along with instructions on how to use the eyewash cup. It all fits handily into a six-inch cardboard tube- hence, Nurse in a Bag Eye Debris Tubes.