Lorna Coutoulas - President

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President – Lorna Coutoulas

The CSAO conference ‘Fundamental Reprocessing – Applications and Monitoring Quality’ went extremely well this year. We had great attendance and excellent speakers. The 2 workshops received very positive feedback. These were suggested by you the members and once we get through the evaluations from this conference, we hope to make your suggestions for improvement happen.
We are already working on next year’s conference to make it bigger and better than this year.

It has been a very busy couple of months. I have been working with a group who are trying to set up a National Group across Canada which would have a National Conference to try and bring Canada together in the Reprocessing world. I continue to represent CSAO on CSA’s, Sterilization Technical Committee, on the standards.
I attended the CSGNA Conference in Ottawa. The presentations were very interesting. This conference, which is mostly for the Gastroenterology Nurses, had some presentations that included the Reprocessing of Flexible Scopes, and the nurses were very impressed that Medical Device Reprocessing was represented at their conference.

I worked with Accreditation Canada and CSA on their 4th National Conference. I attended and moderated the conference which was well attended. We had excellent presentations from experts and managers across the country, Canada was well represented.

I will be attending the AGS, the equivalent of CSAO in Quebec at the end of October to connect with them and see what we can do together in Medical Device Reprocessing.

I am currently coordinating and teaching the CSAO Medical Device classroom course at St. Michael’s Hospital and will be travelling to Dauphin, Manitoba to teach the CSAO classroom course, which is a huge educational opportunity for CSAO.

Lastly and unfortunately an Ottawa clinic hit the news recently because they were not following some infection prevention and cleaning protocols related to Endoscopy procedures and consequently approx. 6,800 patients may have been affected.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/ottawa Public Health statement Infection scare/5562195/story.html#ixzzlbEl5UwlR

This is the reason staff in these clinics need certified MDRD technicians and I intend to look into this further for the regulating of our profession. The important job we do is still under-recognized and for all of you who continue to upgrade your education and certification, Congratulations!!!! You are who keeps patients, our families and friends safe.
Thanks to you all