The AAMI Foundation will hold two complimentary patient safety webinars in August to help hospitals develop and maintain an effective alarm management system. The first webinar, “Alarm Management: From Confusion, to Information, to Wisdom,” will take place Monday, August 3 from 12 PM to 1 PM EST. It will feature representatives from two hospitals who will describe how they use alarm data to enhance both alarm effectiveness and patient safety. The presentations are aimed at helping health organizations comply with The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal on alarm management.

According to AAMI, the webinar is geared toward health professionals with roles in alarm system management, including nurses, physicians, project managers, healthcare technology professionals, biomedical and clinical engineers, patient safety managers, and IT specialists, among others. Kevin Smith, director of Cardiac Services for NCH Healthcare System in Naples, Fla, and Samantha Jacques, PhD, director of Biomedical Engineering for Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, will make the presentations.

The August 3 webinar will address the challenges associated with alarm management and the factors driving the number of alarms, the association says. Participants will learn to use data to inform their alarm management decisions, design workflows to help reduce the number of unnecessary alarms, and prepare to meet regulatory requirements connected with alarm management and patient safety.

Attendees can register for the August 3 session on the event page. For more information, visit the AAMI website.

The dial in phone number for the August 3 webinar is: (562) 247-8421, and the access code is: 630-533-271

The second webinar that AAMI is hosting, “Effects of Patient Load and Other Monitoring System Design Choices on Inpatient Monitoring Quality,” will take place Monday, August 10 from 12 PM to 1 PM EST. It will feature presentations on new research that quantifies the impact of patient load on response time to life-threatening cardiac rhythms.

The August 10 speakers are Melanie Wright, program director of patient safety research at Trinity Health and Saint Alphonsus Health System in Idaho and Oregon; and Noa Segall, PhD, assistant professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC.

Participants in this webinar will learn how increasing the number of patients monitored by cardiac telemetry affects the ability of monitor watchers to respond to critical arrhythmias, and to perform daily tasks. Participants will also learn which characteristics of monitoring system design are likely to influence prevention of and response time to critical events. They will hear about novel methods for evaluating the impact of system design on monitoring quality, and learn to determine whether changes may be warranted.

Attendees can register for the August 10 session on the event page. For more information, visit the AAMI website.

The dial in phone number for the August 10 webinar is:  (646) 307-1706, and the access code is: 944-256-284