Note to hospital labs. If at all possible, avoid breaking surgeons' wrists. It costs hospitals lots of money and is extremely painful all around.

While that advice may seem overly obvious, sometimes pain brings growth and even a new product or two. For example, it took a falling surgeon's broken wrist to prompt an advance in floor covering that today keeps surgeons--and laboratory personnel--from slipping on paraffin-covered walkways. Cleveland's Cleveland Clinic laboratory, one among many who experience the problem, was the first to pursue a solution.

"That's pretty much how it started. About 10 years ago, we had a surgeon who fell in the hall and broke his wrist," said Gwen Goss, lab manager of anatomic pathology at the Cleveland Clinic. "[The surgeon] slipped in the hall on paraffin that had been tracked there from the lab, so he wasn't even in the lab."

Not long after the incident, a call went out to Martinson-Nicholls Inc., of Willoughby, Ohio, distributors of 3M™ Safety-Walk™ Products and 3M™ Nomad™ Matting, to come up with a solution. The company was already providing Cleveland Clinic labs with floor matting, but this time the lab was requesting matting that would eliminate slippery floors, mainly in paraffin processing rooms. The lab was willing to test any new products that might help solve its problem.

Dan Ruminski, president of Martinson-Nicholls, studied the problem for several days and almost immediately came up with a solution--3M™ Nomad™ floor covering which is made specifically for medical, chemical and industrial laboratories. 3M™ Nomad™ is vinyl, non-woven, continuous filament-bonded matting that withstands the constant abuse of foot traffic, paraffin spillage, and even the most corrosive of chemicals, including sulfuric acid.

"We used everything, chromic acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, multiple stains," Gross said of the testing. "It stood up against it all."

We're pretty innovative in floor matting anyway," Ruminski said. "We've resolved problems for them in the past."

The company was called in to investigate the problem in early 1990 and proposed 3M™ Nomad™ within three months. It was installed almost immediately in a section of Cleveland Clinic's lab and was about to be installed throughout when the lab manager left. The project fell by the wayside until early 1999, when it kicked into gear again to outfit more of the Cleveland Clinic with the no-slip matting.

That's when the newer version of the 3M™ Nomad™ floor covering was introduced. The new matting offers a different loop configuration to capture even more paraffin. Also, this time around, the company is custom fitting labs with the material.

"Labs have custom cabinets and counters made for them, so we figured why not floor covering," Ruminski said. "We can go wall-to-wall in any lab, or customize it to fit any shape or size lab."

The matting was also spliced into carpeting in and around lab areas, and down hallways. "At a recent trade show, we had people tell us wax can get tracked down hallways, all the way out to the parking lot," he said.

At the Cleveland Clinic, the matting was extended wall-to-wall in heavily used areas where it could trap wax and also reduce worker fatigue. Workers found that if there was a delay in cleaning up a spill, the matting trapped the mess and kept it below shoe level until it could be cleaned up.

"Generally in labs, you have tile floors, so if you drop something glass, it breaks," Ruminski said. "With matting, very little of that happens."

In October 1999, Martinson-Nicholls released its newly-configured line of 3M™ Nomad™ in a variety of colors.

"Labs are pretty dreary places," Ruminski said, "so we offered the 3M™ Nomad™ matting in six colors. Gwen picked out a bright blue. We found that if you introduce color, it makes for a brighter environment that people seem to like."

Out of the floor covering came the next step--a foot rest made of 3M™ Nomad™. For lab workers who sit most of the day, Ruminski tripled the layers of Nomad to build a foot rest that traps paraffin and reduces worker fatigue.

What may be the truest test of 3M™ Nomad™ resilency? The folks in charge of the locker room for the Cleveland Browns heard about the matting and installed it in locker rooms of Cleveland Browns Stadium.

"We matted from the locker room right out to the field to keep wet spikes from slipping on concrete," Ruminski stated. "Spikes not only don't stick, the matting cleans them as the guys walk on it. People ask if this stuff holds up, I tell them, 'Hey, we did the Browns, and they're tramping all over it with spikes!'."

"We did a (medical) convention in Providence, RI, in October, and people were coming looking for us," he said. "This (slippage in labs) is a world-wide problem that no one has really addressed. To my knowledge, we're the first to do so.

"We heard more stories of people slipping on waxy floors," he said. "We must have heard at least 50 stories of people falling and breaking something."

None were from the Cleveland Clinic though. "We don't like to break surgeons' wrists," Goss said with a smile.

Timeline:

Early 1990: Martinson-Nicholls called about paraffin problem on floors at Cleveland Clinic after surgeon falls and breaks his wrist.

Mid-1990: 3M™ Nomad™ Scraper Matting 8150 developed and installed at Cleveland Clinic.

(The following report was prepared by Mary M. Davis, AA, HT (ASCP), of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Department of Anatomic Pathology.)

A floor covering is needed in the special stain area of the Histology Laboratory that is neat in appearance, highly durable, and easily maintained. Two samples of 3M™ Nomad™ Carpet Matting (gray and brown), were chosen to be tested scientifically for these qualities.

Three applications each of twelve different solutions were applied to designated areas of the swatches. The following chart displays the results of these experiments.

†+ Excellent
† Average

The swatches were then cleaned in Erado-Sol cleaning solution and flushed with water. It was concluded that both brown and gray samples held up very well to the acids and corrosives that were applied. The 3M™ Nomad™ Matting is heartily recommended as the floor covering of the special stains area of the Histology Laboratory. The brown swatch exceeded the gray in appearance and was therefore selected.

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