Updated June 08, 2015.

Medical carts are found in ambulatory care clinics, and virtually every department of a hospital, including and especially:

• emergency departments,
• intensive care units,
• medical and surgical inpatients floors,
• laboratories,
• phlebotomy,
• exam rooms,
• transfusion and dialysis,
• pharmacy,
• materials management,
• the operating room suite and its material supply area.

Medical carts are also called procedure and supply carts, because they store and transport the supplies that doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals need to provide care to a patient.

They carry supplies that allow clinicians to record symptoms and diagnose disease or injury, and provide kits for the clinician to perform minor procedures. In the Operating Room, you'll find larger carts that are prepared in a sterile setting that can store equipment, tools, and other supplies for the OR staff to perform major procedures.

Some of the medical specialties that typically use carts to perform procedures or dress wounds on their patients include:

• urology
• cardiology
• gastroenterology
• general surgery
• podiatry
• imaging
• transplant
• obstetrics & gynecology
• anesthesia

In addition to these departments and medical specialties, of which I've listed only a portion of the most common, there are also carts that have a specific use, such as:

• Crash Carts, for treating patients that have coded; patients that have suffered a life-threatening cardiac arrest and require the Advanced Cardiac Life Support protocol to have any chance of surviving
• Anesthesia Carts, specifically for the administration of anesthesia to a patient undergoing surgery

• Isolation Carts, sometimes called Infection Control Carts, designed for infection prevention and control while isolating a contagious patient
• Airway Carts, carrying supplies specifically to aid a clinician in helping a patient with a difficult airway to breath more effectively
• Cast Cart, for the storage and transport of supplies that medical staff will need to use for casting and splinting
• IV Therapy Cart, which would hold individual supplies or even what are known as minor procedure kits, such as an IV Start Kit or Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI) prevention kit
• Phlebotomy Cart, for blood draw procedures, and for then transporting the blood samples to the lab for analysis
• Medication Cart, for loading in a either a hospital's central pharmacy or in a local medication room that may be found on an inpatient floor; the medication cart is brought to the patient's bedside for the nurse to dispense the prescribed medicine to the patient
• Catheter Cart, a tall cart that resembles a locker on wheels, catheters hang from hook mechanisms at the top of the cart and dangle straight down inside their packaging within the cart so that they can be stored in their extended state
• Computer Storage Cart, a cart with a monitor arm protruding from the top of the cart, with the CPU stored in the bottom of the cart, and drawers for medical supplies in between
• Linen Cart, for the storage and transport of linens such as bed sheets, blankets, towels, and patient gowns
• Cysto Supply Cart, specifically used for procedures on the urinary bladder and urinary tract, they often include a tray that can fold up from the side of the exterior of the cart, and they include several more drawers in their considerable height (they are usually around 6' tall), plus a section to hang catheters
• Bulk Supply Cart, typically a tall and wide cart, (roughly 6' tall x 5' wide, depending on the manufacturer) outfitted with a section for drawers of various depths, open shelves that run half the width of the cart for medium-sized items that are too big for drawers, and wide open shelves that run the full width of the cart in order to store larger pieces of equipment
• Triage Cart, typically found in the Emergency Department, the triage cart stores and transports triage kits that staff can use to diagnose and triage patients who report to the emergency room
• MRI Cart, any storage cart that is made of non-or-weakly magnetic materials so that it can be used for transporting and storing supplies within an Magnetic Resonance Imaging suite.

Medical procedure, supply, storage, and transport carts are found in almost every aspect of patient care, whether it be direct clinical treatment, or in a support capacity such as transporting clean linens. There are general use carts, and specific use carts, but they can all be custom-configured with the quantity and size drawers that you desire to store the supplies that you need. You can further tailor the cart to meet your specific standards by specifying accessories that can be mounted to the top, side, or back of the cart. In order to keep the valuable supplies and equipment in safe hands, cart manufacturers have also developed several options for cart security from which you can choose.