Hospital Baby Blankets

[michael79]

I was watching a documentary on ESPN and the wife of an NBA player was at home holding her new child wrapped in what is clearly one of those hospital baby blankets. You know the ones that every baby is wrapped in: white with pink and blue block stripes. My question: are those supposed to be taken or do people just steal from the hospital? I know my neighbors just had their second baby and they would take diapers and wipes every time a new nurse or CNA walked in the room. They kept saying they were out and needed more. Seems like a lot of money may be lost in this way for the hospital.

[michael79]

And why are baby blankets exactly the same at every hospital across the country?!

[Jennip]

When I had my daughters, they gave us a blanket when we left the hospital, along with a few supplies. I can't imagine taking things just to take them.

[enchantmentdis, BSN, RN]

I am convinced people will swipe anything not nailed down...

They will also eat anything not nailed down.

[Boog'sCRRN246, RN]

They will also eat anything not nailed down.

This is the running joke on my unit - we say a person can leave their bank statements, car keys, deed to the house, first born, etc. laying out and no one would even notice...but if someone leaves a cake, cookie, pie, or other type of pastry out in the open, it'll be gone before you can turn around

[wooh, BSN, RN]

Ugh! HOARDERS!!!!!

But it's not just supplies. I've had families steal movies from our family library. We've had families take home silverware from the dinner trays. Those little scales that are used to weigh diapers (basically a kitchen scale) will disappear in a heartbeat. Our cancer unit had playstations bolted down to the bedside table. Those started disappearing. Red wagons for pulling the patients and their stuff around? Those disappear.

People suck. The longer I'm a nurse, the more they suck.

[shortstuff31117]

Oh yeah some people will take anything they can. We have even had our thermometers walk away...crazy. Every so often we'll have someone come in for a labor check and they end up going home (w/o delivering) and somehow the crib in the room has been emptied. We have to put a note on their chart to empty the crib before they come in the next time...

Sometimes someone won't have any blankets, usually that would be a homeless person or something like that, so we give them some blankets, as well as some clothes from our stash.

We don't charge for our newborn size diapers, only the preemie and size 1s. I haven't actually experienced anyone trying to get tons of diapers, but I would probably be tempted to make some comment about the baby peeing and pooping excessively, just to freak them out....I would never do that, I'd just be tempted, promise!

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

They do sometimes go home, but they are not SUPPOSE to...Our wipes come in a pre packaged bag. If the parents run out we give them hospital washcloths to use. If they run out of diapers we will give them more of those though.

[healthstar, BSN, RN]

All that money that they pay the hospital, I am sure those patients deserve more than a free blanket lol. Those blankets are not made out of diamond, just cheap cotton. I am sure most parents to be have been shopping and they would prefer to use their own pretty blankets. What bothers me the most is the formula, I swear one lady had 3O or more formula bottles in the room and kept asking for more.

[renee1975]

In the hospital with my DD the nurses kept telling us to take the diapers, wipes, individual bottles of formula, baby blankets, etc because they weren't allowed to use them again and they'd just be thrown away. So we took it. I wouldn't have even thought about taking them had they not insisted every time a nurse would walk into the room.

[darkangel83]

Really? On my unit, we totally take back the blankets LOL. We check the baby's carrier/car seat before they leave (with the baby inside) and take the blankets back if they are visible.

UGH!! I'm always catching parents shoving blankets under their babies once they get them into the corificeat. I take a different approach...and tell them how unsafe it is to add things into the corificeat that might prevent the straps from fitting properly! I love how they always say... 'how'd those get there?!' lol like I don't know...

[applewhitern, BSN, RN]

When I worked at a university teaching hospital, in pediatric ICU, the diapers and formula were donated to the hospital by the manufacturers. The blankets belonged to the hospital, however. I always thought it was, in part, a way of advertising for them.

[wooh, BSN, RN]

In the hospital with my DD the nurses kept telling us to take the diapers, wipes, individual bottles of formula, baby blankets, etc because they weren't allowed to use them again and they'd just be thrown away. So we took it. I wouldn't have even thought about taking them had they not insisted every time a nurse would walk into the room.

There's a difference between taking the leftovers of what was used in the room (the rest of the pack of diapers, the rest of the pack of formula, the rest of the pack of wipes) and saying you've run out every time a new person walks in the room and leaving with 10 packs of diapers, 60 bottles of formula, 15 packs of wipes.

And if someone is hurting financially, I'll "accidently" bring more in the room, "Oops, thought you were out of diapers, oh well, take these too." But those aren't the folks that horde the stuff. It doesn't bother me as much from the financial standpoint, although it is coming from my unit's budget, "scanned" or not. What bugs me is when room 1 has taken 10 packs of diapers, overnight and over the weekend, I don't have any diapers left to give rooms 2, 3, 4, and so on even ONE pack. I spend enough of my time running all over the hospital for supplies, I shouldn't have to run all over because someone is too cheap to buy their own diapers.