Do you often get frustrated by the lack of neurological examination equipment on the wards? Are your residents’ backs breaking from lugging around their neurological “case”, weighing in excess of 5 kg?1 Is your ward manager complaining of the never-ending cost of repurchasing lost ophthalmoscopes? If so, read on … this solution might work for your unit!

The Walton Centre is a stand-alone Neurology and Neurosurgery Hospital, with four in-patient wards. An audit showed that over a period of three years, 18 ophthalmoscopes were purchased at a total cost of £2283, 50 tuning forks at £1000 and 30 tendon hammers at £40. Despite this, at the time of the audit, there were only two tendon hammers, two ophthalmoscopes (one locked away in the ward sister’s office) and one otoscope, shared between the four wards; furthermore, these were only found after at least 30 …