Idea Exchange: Keep tubes upright with a little inspiration from the garden

When testing blood, we like to keep the tubes upright while the blood is clotting. That way, when it comes time to spin the tubes in the centrifuge, we can tell the level so they can be balanced. We found that the lavender-top tubes and tiger-top tubes are packaged upright on Styrofoam trays. So we cut the trays to create a flower shape and then wrap the trays in Vetwrap (3M) to keep them from falling apart. The flower-shaped tube holders have been helpful, especially since we test a lot of blood and we can now keep each patient's blood in an individual holder.

Stephanie Alameda, CVT

Dover, N.H.