Ideas That Work: A Simple Fix for IV Pole Wheel Obstacles

Practical pearls from your colleagues

IV poles are critical for patient care, but these OR staples come with a major flaw: The wheels often become jammed and entangled with wires, creating a nuisance for staff attempting to move the poles and potentially posing a threat to safety.

“The tangle of wires requires me to bend down and rearrange things during surgery so that I can move the pole,” says Matthew Muffly, MD, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

“It’s inefficient and detracts attention from the patient.” Beyond inefficiency, these issues can also prove dangerous to staff. One of Dr. Muffly’s colleagues was seriously injured by an IV pole that fell and struck her because its wheels were too jammed to roll when it was hit by a machine.

Several years ago, Dr. Muffly grew so frustrated by the IV pole wheel problem — and his inability to find a solution — that he decided to develop his own fix. The result? A device he calls Wires Away Wheel Guards, which cover IV pole wheels to help them roll smoothly across the floor. The design is simple: A rectangular piece of thick plastic equipped with two tiny “rollers” inside that enable the guards to push wires away. A stainless-steel clasp affixes the Wheel Guard to the IV pole wheel. The devices, which work for most types of IV poles, are now used in every OR at Stanford Children’s Hospital and have been tested at a dozen hospitals around the country. “People tell me they are a game-changer,” he says.

Luckily, Dr. Muffly had plenty of resources nearby because, well, Stanford. He teamed up with engineers at the University Product Realization Lab, a product design hub and machine shop, to bring his idea to life, and began distributing the Wheel Guards to IV poles in all the ORs in the hospital.

While you may not have the resources at your disposal that Dr. Muffly did, giving your staff the freedom to come up with their own creative work hacks and innovative solutions will likely pay dividends. After all, OR teams are some of the most effective problem-solvers around.

And if you’re interested in bringing Dr. Muffly’s Wires Away Wheel Guards to your facility, you can email him directly at [email protected]. OSM