ideas for special projects

[nell]

Okay, time to share. What special projects do you or someone else, do for your patients/parents/unit?

To get things started, here's one I do:

Stick-on sunglasses.

Parents are often upset that their baby's eyes are covered. With these "sunglasses", it looks more like the babies are basking on the beach.

If you like them, you can download them at: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/hsgrammens/sunglasses.html. Be forewarned: they're large files.

[caliotter3]

Those sunglasses are really adorable! Warms my heart to read a thread like this instead of a long line of people being rude to each other.

[nell]

Well, here's another one:

These are little envelopes for baby's hair when we have to shave it off for an IV. They're acid-free parchment with a traslucent vellum window and each has an embossed design on it. The white ones are also used for hair, ID bands or other keepsakes for parents who have lost a baby.

I also make bigger ones that are more cheerful from scrap-booking papers:

[renerian, BSN, RN]

What wonderful ideas! HOw creative...........your all great!

renerian

[nell]

Since I'm in the process of printing more of these up, I thought I'd add this to the "special projects" list.

We mostly feed pumped breastmilk in our unit and add fortifier or NeoSure to the majority of it. Scrawling the additives and date thawed on the labels was a pain (also hard to read), so I printed up these labels to stick on and make life easier for myself and my co-workers. I also make some to stick on syringes of heparin flush that we keep at the bedside.

It would be nice if the hospital would print them up, but since everything is "budget, budget, budget" it isn't going to happen.

[KRVRN, BSN, RN]

We have labels like that, too. Ours say "FORTIFIED" and we indicate what concentration and with what. Then we have another label to indicate "fresh" vs. "thawed" BM that we write the date and time on. We also have some that say "normal saline" and "heparin flush" which we then date and time. Hospital provides.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

We get little gift packs from some local businesses (BonneBell for one) and we give them to the moms :) We got the cutest little boxes last year, they had heart shaped openings on the top of them and we then did a footprint, or two is the baby was itsy and taped it in there with the date and weight on it :) The were really cute.

We also give every baby a Beanie Baby and a book on admission. :)

[nell]

Hey NicuGal,

That's a great idea. All we give out is the gift pack and book from the formula reps and a hat on holidays.

PS: if you want a Disney font (and don't have it already) here's a place to get one:

http://go.to/disneyfonts

[NICU_Nurse, BSN, RN]

On our unit, we have a very tight budget, so special projects come out of our pockets! :>)

[dawngloves, BSN, RN]

Man, we really need to get our unit organized! It is so impersonal! It's few and far between when a baby has a name tag on his isolette let alone a bracelet!