beanie babies

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Does anyone else's hospital give away beanie babies? Our hospital for years has always had a huge stock of them in every treat cart, treatment room, and outpatient centers. Most are older beanies with plastic tag protectors like they belonged in someone's collection and were donated. I wonder how many thousands of beanie babies there are in circulation, and what we will do when they run out?? ;-)

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Specializes in LTC Rehab Med/Surg.

I bought between 200-250 ......for each daughter! Once they outgrew the novelty of the collection, and I figured out they were worthless, they went in big black trash bags. Some migrated outside in little girl size bags and purses never to be seen again. The dogs got a few. There's a huge plastic storage bin in the basement with some of them.

Over the holidays we were at a mall, and a little old lady on a scooter stopped whenever she saw a child and gave them a beanie baby. My granddaughter got two because she ran into us twice an hour apart. A super kind gesture from a nice old lady. I wish I'd had a couple of hundred of mine to give her, so she could ride around for days giving the silly things away.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Well, I apparently work at the coolest peds hospital on the planet because WE give every child who spends the night in our facility a SUPER HERO CAPE! It's awesome.

(Although we have a crap ton of stuffed animal and the like in our 'cave of wonders' closet.

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I have never heard of that, that's awesome! I wish we had stuff to give out to our babies, or at least had cute band-aids or something.

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Thanks to my roommate and her families obsession with the beanies in the 90's we currently have a bucket (three actually) of over 500 beanies for the little ones in my cardiac ICU. I love to make sure every baby has a beanie baby on admission if possible, especially since some of the newborns are arriving alone, the parents really appreciate it. The toddlers love them too!

I found the perfect one right on top the pile for a little gal admitted today, it was the pink January birthday bear. Fitting since she was born today :-)

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My twins got cute little lamb beanies in the Nicu, we still have them 6 years later!

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.
I have never heard of that, that's awesome! I wish we had stuff to give out to our babies, or at least had cute band-aids or something.

LOVE the Bender avatar!!!

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Just got inspired to share this: Whenever I have a patient who has had a particularly rough night (puking / no parents / unrelieved pain) I give them a little something from the 'cave of wonders' (Beanie, toy etc) and tell them that the night nurses had a contest for the 'best patient of the night' and after all the votes were counted that they WON!!!

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Specializes in Pedi.

When I worked in the hospital, we didn't have anything like this. We had a prize box that kids could choose from after cooperating with a particularly unpleasant procedure but that was it. And the prizes could not be stuffed animals and had to be in packages.

However, I am surprised to hear about all the beanie babies circulating in hospitals. My hospital did not accept ANY stuffed animals as donations and certainly nothing used... who knows what they could be harboring. We used to have a guy who came in to donate a whole bunch of low quality stuffed animals every year (the kind you'd win at a carnival)... and they were accepted and then thrown away.

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When I worked in the hospital, we didn't have anything like this. We had a prize box that kids could choose from after cooperating with a particularly unpleasant procedure but that was it. And the prizes could not be stuffed animals and had to be in packages.

However, I am surprised to hear about all the beanie babies circulating in hospitals. My hospital did not accept ANY stuffed animals as donations and certainly nothing used... who knows what they could be harboring. We used to have a guy who came in to donate a whole bunch of low quality stuffed animals every year (the kind you'd win at a carnival)... and they were accepted and then thrown away.

My NICU (same hospital) would not allow donated beanies for this reason. The rest of the hospital will take anything that's given.

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Specializes in Pedi.
My NICU (same hospital) would not allow donated beanies for this reason. The rest of the hospital will take anything that's given.

See... that's odd to me. Patients on other floors (oncology, stem cell transplant, solid organ transplant, etc.) are just as much at risk for infection as babies in the NICU are.

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See... that's odd to me. Patients on other floors (oncology, stem cell transplant, solid organ transplant, etc.) are just as much at risk for infection as babies in the NICU are.

Well I'l be honest, having never worked heme-onc I don't know what their policies are. I agree that our babies in the CICU are at high risk for infection and if the quality of an item was ever questioned we wouldn't give them out. The beanie babies we have currently are from a known source and have spent their life in a plastic bin and are all in excellent condition so they have been allowed.

My hospital also gets large donations of build a bears and other stuffed animals from organizations and they are given out as well. They are all new condition so I don't see the problem with it. Again rules might differ on the heme onc floor but even the nicu would take the build a bears (which was always funny when the 1kg preemie had a bear bigger than them)

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