Design of a Pharmaceutical Tablet Crusher

Pill crushers are used extensively in Long Term Care Facilities (LTCFs) and retirement homes to crush medication before administering it to a resident. Most residents in care facilities receive medication, several times a day. Many residents have problems swallowing a tablet of any size and therefore require their medication to be crushed and mixed with another medium to ease ingestion.

Glenda Campbell (1), a consultant pharmacist for LTCFs with Medical Pharmacies Group Inc. (MPGI), contacted James Baleshta of Nordac Design Inc. to address problems experienced with existing pill crushers.  Although relatively simple devices, existing crushers required several loud and repetitive pounding actions to adequately crush a single tablet and were unable to apply sufficient force to efficiently crush some of the harder tablets. 

In fact, facility staff members were developing repetitive strain injuries induced by the numerous repetitions required to crush a pill completely. Furthermore, the crushing noise generated at mealtimes, in facility dining rooms, was particularly unpleasant and increased the agitation of some of the cognitively impaired residents (1). Similarly, nighttime medication preparation, undertaken in the hallways of the facilities, disturbed those who were already asleep.

The challenge was to design a pill crusher that operated silently, forcefully, and without numerous repetitions