The AAMI Foundation has announced that it is hosting a series of free patient safety webinars that will illustrate the benefits of expanding continuous electronic monitoring to all patients receiving parenteral opioids in general care settings.

The series will identify strategies hospitals can use to overcome barriers to implementation, as well as develop the business case for continuous patient monitoring. Benefits include decreased lengths of stay, a reduction in intensive care unit transfers, and improved patient outcomes.

The first webinar in the series, “Successful Strategies to Implement Continuous Respiratory Monitoring in Low Acuity Hospitalized Patients,” will be held Wednesday, November 18 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM (EST). It will feature presentations by Susan McGrath, PhD, and George T. Blike, MD, from Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Also slated to speak is Frank J. Overdyk, MSEE, MD, chair of the National Coalition to Promote Continuous Monitoring of Patients on Opioids.

Organized by the AAMI Foundation’s National Coalition to Promote Continuous Monitoring of Patients on Opioids, this first session will address evidence suggesting that late recognition of respiratory issues compromises hospitalized patients in low-acuity settings. It will also spotlight challenges and barriers to adoption of continuous respiratory monitoring for patients in these settings; keys to its successful implementation; outcomes and metrics of continuous respiratory monitoring on patient safety in low-acuity settings, and benefits of communicating the goals and objectives of the coalition with patient safety leadership.

This webinar is intended for members of multidisciplinary teams at healthcare delivery organizations, especially nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, healthcare technology professionals, biomedical and clinical engineers, patient safety managers, information technology specialists, and others involved in physiological monitoring and alarm management.

Slide presentations and a webinar recording will be made available on the AAMI Foundation’s National Coalition to Promote Continuous Monitoring of Patients on Opioids website.