crib mattresses

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Please help! I have been a peds nurse for more years than I can believe. I have had the opporutunity to work with kids in a variety of settings. However, this is the first hospital that I have worked at where the mattresses are about 6 inches to short for the cribs. We have to put pillows at the bottom of the cribs so they fit. I have asked our manager and several other nurses about this practice. No one seems to concerned but me. Am I wrong here, I thought there had to be a safety code regarding things as this. Does anyone have any ideas what my next step should be. I don't want to see any of our patients injured. Plus I really feel we are giving a wrong message to our families when they see this type of practice. Thank you!!!!!! :idea: :idea:

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Specializes in CCU, Geriatrics, Critical Care, Tele.

I'll move this thread to the Pediatric Nursing forum, from the California Nursing Forum for hopefully bettter exposure, discussion and responses.

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Specializes in NICU.

I definitely see a problem there! Kids can wiggle around, and I would be scared to death that they'd wiggle down to the part with the pillows and either suffocate or move them and end up with an arm or leg hanging through the bottom of the crib. I don't know who you could contact, but something must be done.

At our hospital, unfortunately it seems like our mattresses are often too BIG for the cribs. We don't have a universal kind of crib. Between Peds, NICU, and outpatient surgery, there are at least 6 different types floating around, all different kinds of mattresses. Sometimes it's almost impossible to lift the side rails up without tilting the mattress up so the baby rolls to the other side of the crib. I really wish we had those nice, oval cribs that I'm always seeing on TV medical shows...

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Somebody in Management needs to get their sh*t together before a child gets injured over some negligent/cost effective decision. Or they are going to have a HUGE lawsuit on their hands, not to mention, IF they posess hearts, a whole lot of guilt. It wouldn't take that much to categorize these mattresses with numbers, to match the cribs they fit and so on, and for the original writer, I'm sure a call to someone up high enough, would get you the correct crib mattresses your nursery needed, afer all it's getting to be survey time, and we both know that pillows shoved at the end of would NEVER pass.

Good Luck to both of you,

the new girl :)

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HOW SCARY!!! We tell pts. to make sure that their mattress at HOME fits securely, but the hospital mattress doesn't??? Definately a BIG safety issue!

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Specializes in MS Home Health.

Very scarey. Not safe at all.

renerian

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