About Us…and Pediatric Safety

In the late 90’s my sister Suzanne, an EMT, came to me with an idea for safe transport of young children on ambulances. I won’t go into too much detail about her story…if you like you can read about it in the blog called an EMT’s Story…but basically she had designed a solution to a problem that had been a nightmare for the EMS industry for years. She hoped that with my business background that I could help her make it a reality.

And I told her sure, no problem. I was a consultant with a top MBA who helped people do things like that for a living. I would put together my list of questions…do some market research…gather some data…put together a business plan…get the patents pulled together. I had it all mapped out. Except there was no data to be gathered. Back then no one really even knew how many ambulances there were, forget how many accidents. And forget trying to track reported accident statistics because no one was required to report them…unless someone died. And although the EMS community cared greatly about changing this, no one could find a way to make something tangible happen. My brilliant plan fell apart before it even got off the ground.

It’s been almost 14 years since Suzanne first created crayon drawings of her ambulance child seat. During that time it’s been an incredible journey. I learned a lot more about EMS and child safety than I ever imagined – some that scared the heck out of me. Sue and I both learned what it’s like to be inventors: to find unbelievable support and heartbreaking betrayal, both where you’d never expect it. We learned everything you’d ever want to know and probably many things you wouldn’t about the patent process and about prototyping. And we’ve written it all down in Our Story and Our Creation in the hopes that some of what we’ve learned we can pass on to those of you just getting started on this path.

And we learned that if we were going to make real change happen and start saving some kids lives, then it was going to have to be a lot bigger than us and our mother who joined to help us create the cause ANSR for Kids (Ambulances Need Safety Regulations). We’d have to go out and look for support and ask all the people who care– the parents and doctors and nurses and emergency responders and teachers and everyone else who cares about kids – for help. And as we started talking and tweeting and looking for help we realized something amazing. There was a whole world of child health and safety issues that people wanted and needed to talk about – needed to depend on each other to support them through – and if we worked together, we could make this into something so much more than where we started.

So welcome to Pediatric Safety – our new community for everyone who cares about the health and welfare of kids. We hope this site will help raise awareness of child health and safety issues and provide a community for all caregivers to have an open exchange of questions and ideas. Hopefully together, we can help each other…and maybe just maybe…we make a difference.

Thanks…Your PedSafe Team – Stefanie, Suzanne and Sandy