Ready for Anything: Donors Help with Emergency Preparation in the NICU

Thanks to donors’ generosity, nurses have a new tool to rescue babies during an emergency.

Donors to Benefis Foundation’s Patient Care Tower Fund made the purchase of baby mover aprons possible.

Nurses can carry three babies at once with the special pockets in the tunic-style apron. That helps ensure every baby makes it out and frees up nurses to help with other roles in the event of an evacuation.

If a fire or other disaster required evacuation from the NICU and Pediatric Unit on Floor 6 and Birth Center on Floor 7, the plan called for nurses to carry the babies down the stairs in their arms or in the heavy isolettes.

“We have to have a way to get babies out, and they are so vulnerable,” said Toni Hackett, director of Women’s and Children’s Services. “If the elevators aren’t working, we have to have a way to move all these babies at once safely down the stairs.”

The baby movers are part of the hospital’s readiness plan and speak to the ways donors impact patients, Toni added.

“Support of this program allows top-of-the-line care and the things that make a difference in emergencies,” she said. “We try to prepare for the worst so we know what to do to ensure the best outcomes.”

The Patient Care Tower Fund dates from the campaign to build the South Tower at East Campus and supports Women’s and Children’s Services (including Pediatrics, Labor and Delivery, and the NICU), the Heart and Vascular Institute, and the chapel.