I-Flow Promotes Bus Tour at AAOS Meeting

It was hard to miss I-Flow LLC’s exhibit at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) annual meeting last week: The company’s display was the only one featuring a full-sized bus.

Emblazoned with the I-Flow logo and marketing copy, the vehicle was on hand at the five-day event in Chicago, Ill., (March 19-23) to help publicize a nationwide bus tour aimed at educating clinicians, hospital administrators and other healthcare professionals about the company’s products and the role post-operative pain management systems play in minimizing narcotics use, reducing both hospital stays and cost, and improving overall patient care. The “On the Road with ON-Q: Post-Operative Pain Education Bus Tour” begins in early April and will visit 36 hospitals throughout the country over the course of 18 weeks.

“For care providers, acute surgical pain management is an increasingly important issue as the negative effects of powerful narcotics have become further realized,” said Chris Barys, I-Flow general manager. “The goal of the mobile classroom is to give clinicians the education and resources they need to make the most optimal pain management decisions post-surgery, maintaining the patient’s comfort and safety as the top priority.”

The bus is equipped to function as a mobile classroom, containing video monitors, seating and a table for product demonstrations. Price St. Hilaire, I-Flow’s director of global marketing, said the vehicle can accommodate 25-30 people and will be driven by the same motorist who crisscrossed the country last year for a hospital-acquired infection awareness tour sponsored by I-Flow’s parent firm, Kimberly-Clark Healthcare.

Each stop along the tour (which will break for the summer months to avoid severe weather) will feature a surgeon, anesthesiologist and hospital administrator discussing their experiences in pain management and with I-Flow’s signature product—an elastomeric pain relief pump that administers an automatic and continuous regulated flow of local anesthetic through a specially designed catheter to the surgical site area. At some sessions, a patient treated with ON-Q will be available to answer questions.

Post-surgical pain treatment traditionally has been limited to narcotics, which can cause such side effects as nausea, vomiting, grogginess and immunosuppression. Strong drugs also carry the risk of addiction. Reducing patients’ dependency on narcotics can improve pain management after surgery and expedite recovery (patients generally are discharged 1.1 days earlier when their drug use is strictly regulated, according to I-Flow).

For details about the “On the Road with ON-Q: Post Operative Pain Education Bus Tour,” visit www.ON-QBus.com, connect via Facebook (www.ON-QBus.com/Facebook) or follow the bus on Twitter at www.ON-QBus.com/Twitter.