I've never heard of that before Widdly. I'd be very surprised if any hospital swapped dummies between babies because of the hygiene issue - I'd be livid if I discovered they had done that! I'd also be surprised if any hospital would just routinely give babies dummies - particularly without the consent of the parents.

Most hospitals will leave the decision of using a dummy up to you - I have never heard otherwise! In fact I know that a dummy was never even mentioned to us in hospital, although we did give Jacob one when he was a few days old as he wasn't being breastfed at that point but needed to suck for comfort.