Lorna Coutoulas - President

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Presidents Annual Report 2012

Patient Safety Begins with You is the theme of this year's conference, and as Medical Device Reprocessing staff, that is the heart and soul of our profession. There is nothing more important than the care, proper handling and correct reprocessing of medical devices when it comes to patients and surgery. Children are our future and every day we reprocess medical devices with care and compassion to keep them safe.

This year has been a very busy year. I was a guest of Anne-Marie Rancourt, President AGS, the equivalent of CSAO in Quebec. It was an honor to be part of their conference.

Honoring my commitment to education, I travelled to Dauphin, Manitoba, to teach the CSAO classroom course. This was a great experience for me to see so many reprocessing students give their time take the course and being excited about learning and educating themselves.

I have been coordinating and teaching the Eta chapter classroom courses for 2011 and 2012, educating students in reprocessing for the future. Education is a primary focus for all of us in reprocessing and we need to continue to improve our knowledge as we know there are constant changes with new and more complex devices coming in to our department.

I presented at the 5^th annual HSCN, (Hospital Supply Chain Network) on our critical link to the OR. Connecting with staff that work so closely with sterile product is extremely important. I enjoyed this presentation very much and just being able to talk about what we do and educate other staff in our processes to gain an understanding is very important to me and to our career.

I attended the CSA Sterilization Technical meeting at the end of January. We are working on a mother document Z314.00, which will have a lot of the duplicates from the standards e.g personnel, general requirements, education etc. We also started to revise Z314.8 Decontamination of Reusable Medical Devices and I am pleased to say that Z314.23 Chemical Sterilization of Reusable Medical Devices in Health care Facilities is available for purchase through the CSA website.

As part of the MD-RAP (Medical Device Reprocessing Advisory Panel) I attended IAHCSMM at the beginning of May in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a great conference, well attended worldwide and reinforcing Canada's need for a national committee and conference. I will continue to work with the MD-RAP on the National initiative.

I presented to the ORNAO (Operating Room Nurses of Ontario) at their bi-annual conference on the Challenges in MDR and how we handle them. My presentation was very well received and some of the nurses were surprised with the challenges we have with reprocessing instructions, loaners, double booking, etc.

As many of you know, this is my second and last term as President of CSAO, which was a first for the association. This happened primarily because we have difficulty finding people to commit to the work required in organizing the annual conference, magazine, website, education and chapters. Every ounce of work is worth it to bring our important profession to the forefront and not just when something is wrong.

I have had a wonderful experience the last eight years making so many contacts, colleagues, friends across Canada and Internationally. We have lost some valuable friends throughout the year and we will always remember their hard work and dedication always.

I wish the new President and executive all the best as they move CSAO into the future with innovative ideas and projects. I know they will do a fabulous job.

As Past President, I will continue to fulfill my responsibilities and work with the incoming President and executive when they need my experience to guide them forward. My entire career has been dedicated to patient safety through correct reprocessing of Medical Devices and I will continue to make a difference in the Medical device field and I am truly glad I chose one of the most exciting careers anyone could have.