Buying Guide For Medicine Cabinets

A Medicine Cabinet Buying Guide to Assist Your Purchase

Here at Pharmacy Medical we want to give you the most information we can, prior to you making your purchase. We know that buying something like a medicine online can be a difficult process, therefore we have prepared this medicine cabinet buying guide, and the guides on the subsequent pages. Links below. Please have a read through these before ordering and if you need any further assistance, please give us a call.

We’ve prepared this medicine cabinet buying guide to try and answer as many medicine cabinet related questions as we can. Unlike some of the other cabinets we manufacture, there are many different configurations under the medicine cabinet umbrella.

What Type of Medicine Cabinet Do I Need?

First things first, we don’t manufacture your typical ‘medicine cabinet’, the ones you see on Amazon and other sites that say they are suitable for first aid supplies etc. All of our medicine cabinets, with the exception of our POD lockers, conform to BS2881:1989 level one, which is the standard for the storage of medicines in healthcare premises. If you need to store medicines in a cabinet to this standard, the cheap boxes available elsewhere, probably don’t meet the requirements – just a point to note.

All our available BS2881:1989 level 1 compliant cabinets are as follows:

  • Medicine Cabinets: Medicine Cabinets are the most popular. These cabinets come with internal shelving and are designed to store medication in blister packs, original packaging or MDS hoops on a series of height adjustable shelving. Available in a wide range of sizes, these cabinets are suitable for the storage of medication, ot controlled drugs.
  • MDS Cabinets: Our monitored dosage system MDS cabinets are the same construction as our medicine cabinets, just sold with hooks on the back of the cabinet rather than the shelving. These hooks are designed to hold the MDS blister pack hoops. Depending on the size of the cabinet ordered the number of these hooks will vary.
  • Base and Tower Units: Our base and tower units again follow the same construction methods as our medicine cabinets. With these cabinets however, we use a more robust piano hinge on the door (due to the size of the cabinets) and on the larger tower units we install two locks. These cabinets are available as standard with either height adjustable shelving or pull out plastic trays.
  • Medicine Cabinets with CD Cabinets Inside: These cabinets are often found in care homes. They are our standard medicine cabinets with a controlled drugs cabinet inside them. We can put a selection of our controlled drugs cabinet inside most of our medicine cabinets, all with the exception of a MED100 and a MED230 as they are too small. We have three internal CD cabinets, the CDC001 (smallest) CDC002 (most popular) and our CDC905 (largest). These cabinets sit inside the medicine cabinet and bolt to the wall through specially designed fixing holes in the rear of the medicine cabinet with the bolts provided. There are specific rules surrounding CD cabinets inside a medicine cabinet. The main one being that the key to the lock of the CD cabinet can not be left in the door of the CD cabinet when the door of the outer medicine cabinet is closed. So please don’t buy a different cabinet to the ones we offer as chances are it won’t fit or comply with this rule.

Wall or Floor Fixing?

Our catalogue of medicine cabinets are all wall fixing as standard. That said, we can convert units for floor fixing upon request. Although we can, we have never been asked to do this fr medicine cabinets. Medicine cabinets are a lot lighter then CD cabinets and are generally fine secured to a solid wall.

How do I Fix My Cabinet?

Fixing our medicine cabinets follow, in essence, the same process as fixing our controlled drugs cabinets.  It is a very simple process. Although the regulations don’t state that we must send the fixing bolts out with medicine cabinets, we’re nice and include them with your purchase. These are the same bolts that are used to secure our controlled drugs cabinets, and therefore the installation process is the same. Simply hold the cabinet in place, mark the holes positions in the back of the cabinet, remove the cabinet and drill the holes. Then when the holes are drilled, put the cabinet in place, insert the bolts and tighten them up, simple as that. Make sure that you check the position of the holes before you drill as they are quote large holes.

There is a more detailed fitting guide (for our controlled drugs cabinets) in the link below:

See more here.

Checking Sizes

This is probably the hardest part about buying a medicine cabinet, and one of the main reasons we made this medicine cabinet buying guide. Trying to check the sizes of a product you can’t see in front of you can be quite difficult. Therefore, we have created our measuring guide. This guide better explains how to interpret the sizes we put to our cabinets, so you can make a better educated decision. The guide provides a visual representation of the sizes on a stock CD cabinet. Although the guide is for a CD cabinet, the way we provide our sizes for medicine cabinets are the same, so the guide is still relevant. We strongly advise that you check the sizes of the cabinet you order before ordering. We also try to order our cabinets by volume, starting with the smallest. The volume can be seen on the main image, next to whether the cabinet is wall or floor fixing. Please read the guide on measuring your cabinet, a link to this is above. We also strongly advise measuring the space that your cabinet is intended to fit in, something that can often be overlooked. If you need any further information, please get in touch.

MED231 Medicine Cabinet

Medicine Cabinet Buying Guide fixing

Medicine Cabinet Buying Guide installation spanner

Medicine Cabinet Buying Guide measuring your cabinet