PediNet: Paramedic`s Strapping System for Kids Boosts Prevention Efforts

I’ve reviewed many great tools for EMSers during the past 25 years: the Stifneck, V-Vac, SAM, SSCORT, Spider Straps, the KED and KTD, the Sager and a gazillion others. There were vacuum splints, flashlights, stethoscopes, pneumatic trousers and stretchers, field radios, pocket references and triage tags. Some were ready for the road; others were prototypes. Some were great ideas; others were goofy. Some of their inventors liked what I said, but others thought I was an idiot. And while some of their ideas made it big, others disappeared.

It’s tough bringing an idea to market, and tougher still to keep it there. For every decent inventor who puts his or her heart and life savings into an idea, there’s a crowd of interlopers just waiting to copy its measurements, knock it off cheap and put their own name on it. Some don’t even bother to come up with their own colors. (There’s a way to keep people like that out of business, and it’s simple: Buy the real deal every time, and the bad guys will all have to get real jobs.)

I love it when I get a chance to help a working EMT or paramedic publicize something new and important that they’ve developed in their garage. Especially when it involves something like child safety. See, kids can’t write their senators. They depend on committed adults to make sure their needs don’t get overlooked.

Lisa Valadie is an Acadian paramedic from Clinton, MS. She’s passionate about pediatric trauma prevention, and her experience with kids has convinced her that we don’t strap them down very well during transport. She’s right. Nothing about the strapping systems we use on ambulance cots was ever calculated to address the body dimensions of kids. In the event of an ambulance crash, most kids would probably end up in the driver’s compartment (or worse).

But Lisa’s an activist, and she got active. She started her own company, Safety Connection, and developed a line of pediatric strapping equipment. Her flagship product is an inexpensive net made of 1½" nylon straps with Velcro closures that can accommodate the handholds on any backboard (with or without the use of additional hardware, like the LSP board or the KED). The PediNet is simple, with five horizontal straps and three vertical ones stitched together, 5½ inches apart.

Remember those names: Safety Connection and PediNet. Specify them, so somebody doesn’t come along and make money knocking them off. (See how that works?)

PediNet is designed to be priced at $125. Some of that money will go to funding pediatric trauma-prevention efforts. Patents are pending.

You can reach the inventor at jump2it@bellsouth.net, or 601/573-0756. Her company’s website is www.pedinet.com.