METHOD FOR WIRELESSLY MONITORING THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ONE OR MORE PERSONS AND ASSOCIATED PERSON MONITORING SYSTEM

A person monitoring system employs an exemplary method for wirelessly monitoring one or more persons, wherein each person is initially positioned in a respective person support device (PSD) and each PSD is associated with a presence determining device (PDD) operable to detect a presence of a person in the PSD. A portable unit (PU) of the system wirelessly receives status signals during a training period from one or more PDDs. Each status signal includes a respective identifier corresponding to the PDD. The PU stores identifiers included in status signals received during the training period to produce monitored identifiers. After expiration of the training period, the PU wirelessly receives status signals from at least some of the PDDs. The PU then determines whether each monitored identifier is included in at least one respective post-training status signal received during a predetermined time interval and, if not, alerts a user of the PU.