Brief from Dr Amanda for the 3D print design

Here is the brief the children had to work to from Dr Amanda

Test tube rack Design Brief

Test tube rack to hold one small and one large diameter test tube, for a hospital laboratory. The   surface should be smooth and easy to clean, and resistant to ethanol and acetone. The rack should be sufficiently heavy to resist being knocked over, and sturdy enough to survive being dropped on the floor.

The purpose of this test tube rack is to provide a hands free method of  holding the tube upright. There are two important reasons:

1.        To enable laboratory staff to fill the tube with liquid expelled from a syringe. Two hands are needed when operating a syringe.

2.       Not holding the test tube with a hand, reduces the risk of accidental needle stick injury to the laboratory staff when filling the test tube from a syringe with a needle.

Background: The types of specimens collected in these test tubes is material sucked out of patients lumps, with a needle and a syringe. A cytology scientist prepares the liquid specimens into glass slides. I am a medical doctor trained as a Pathologist. I work in a hospital laboratory. I examine the patient’s lump, suck out some fluid with a needle and syringe,  collect the specimen in the test tube, and  look down the microscope to make the diagnosis. The diagnosis is the explanation as to what is causing the lump, examples are cancer or infection.

The laboratory scientist is expelling liquid from a pipette into the test tube. This larger rack holds up to 8 test tubes, and is used on the laboratory bench. We need a smaller test tube rack to take out when collecting samples from patients. The smaller rack is what you are designing.  In a hospital laboratory we wear gloves to prevent contact with infectious material and chemicals. These purple gloves are resistant to acetone.

This is Dr Low, she is a Pathologist, she is looking down the microscope at a glass slide, to make a diagnosis. She is in charge of Cytology specimens, which is the area we need the test tube rack.

   

On the top is a glass slide with cells, stained purple so we can see them. Below it is what the cells look like down the microscope, the magnification is 400x what you can see with your eye.

This is me, Amanda Charlton, I work in this office in the Histology Department of Middlemore Hospital in Auckland. I use a microscope to look at samples, and I voice dictate my diagnostic reports onto the computer. See the microscope has an extra arm to the left side, this is to allow a second person to look down and see the same thing I am seeing. This is called a double header microscope, and it is used for teaching young doctors to be pathologists.