Pediatrician-Founded Company is No Accident

By Brenda H. Welch, Hampton Roads Health Journal - December 2008

More than three years ago, I was a new mommy existing in a new world where catching the Washington DC Metro into work each morning was replaced by catching my son Sam before he got into something dangerous.

My husband Bob and I thought we had done everything right in childproofing our home; we bought plastic electrical outlet covers, latches for cabinets, and invested a small fortune in baby gates. Yet it quickly became apparent that with childproofing, there is more to it than meets the eye.

Take, for example, the time when Sam decided to use a tall bookcase to aid in pulling himself up or when he got his chubby arm caught in a round opening of a seemingly innocuous toy. Both times we narrowly missed having to take a trip to the emergency room— but then the stapler incident occurred.

About two years ago, Bob and I were relaxing in the living room, which is within earshot of the playroom where Sam was busy doing noisy toddler things—or so we thought. When we realized we didn’t hear him banging around anymore, Bob went to investigate and found Sam sitting on the floor in the office, blissfully munching on staples. After a frantic drive to the emergency room and a half-hour wait, a pediatrician told us that Sam would be just fine. Bob and I, however, were another story. The question “What if?” hung in the air for days.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, more children die from accidental injuries each year than from all other childhood diseases combined. As a board-certified pediatric emergency physician at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk, Dr. Joel Clingenpeel is all too familiar with this statistic. He says home injuries are one of the top reasons children under the age of three are taken to the emergency room, and he cautions that the number increases during this time of year. “Around the holidays we mainly see a rise in common home injuries (ingestions, falls, burns, etc.) simply because adults are busier during this time, and there are lots of visitors in the home,” says Clingenpeel.

Clingenpeel and his colleague, Dr. James Schmidt, also a board-certified pediatric emergency physician at CHKD, are reminded daily of the ramifications of inadequate childproofing and share a commitment to help parents and caregivers protect their children from preventable injuries.

To help local families, Clingenpeel and Schmidt established Child Safety House Calls in June 2008 (not affiliated with CHKD). Located in Virginia Beach, Child Safety House Calls is the nation’s first pediatrician-founded child safety promotion and childproofing company.

The company promotes injury prevention through:
• Child safety education and awareness
• Childproofing consultations for homes and businesses in Hampton Roads
• Sale and installation of childproofing products
• Research and evaluation of child safety products

To access free childproofing educational materials, or for more information, visit www.childsafetyhousecalls.com, e-mail info@ChildSafetyHouseCalls.com or call
(757) 200-SAFE (7233).

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About Child Safety House Calls
Child Safety House Calls is led by two emergency room pediatricians and specializes in evaluating and selling through their online child safety store childproofing and child safety products such as child safety gates, childproof locks, childproof door locks, childproof gates, childproof door knobs, childproof latches, childproof drawers, childproof cabinets, baby gates, baby safety items, bathroom safety items, tub safety items and more. They provide information to parents nationwide on childproofing your home, child safety in the home, and the best childproof products. In Hampton Roads, Virginia, their team conducts child safety house calls to parents in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, and Williamsburg.