An electronic sitter management system coupled to patient surveillance network having a plurality of video cameras, each camera transmitting a stream of surveillance video of a respective patient room. The sitter management system includes at least one sitter management device and a plurality of sitter devices. Each device being assigned a plurality of patient rooms and capable of receiving a plurality of streams of surveillance video for the corresponding plurality of patient rooms and simultaneously displaying a plurality of video images of the corresponding plurality of patient rooms. Each device is also capable of transmitting sitter device availability information to the sitter management device. The sitter management device being capable of recognizing a sitter device being unavailable and reassigning the plurality of patient rooms previously assigned to the unavailable device to other of the plurality of sitter devices that are available.