NY State Association of Central Service Professionals Holds Annual Educational Seminar

By Victoria Spencer

This year's meeting was another success for the New York State Association of Central Service Professionals. For the 140 attendees who joined us, they were part of another history-maker for our New York chapters. We would like to acknowledge our friends from the other side of the border, Canada, as once again they were present. Thanks for making our goals yours.

This year, as always, Lake George was beautiful. The weather was perfect and the town was busy with tourists. Thursday night we were welcomed by a beautiful display of fireworks on the lake, which we enjoyed from the hotel. This year’s meeting provided an excellent opportunity for networking and getting to know our friends from all over New York state, Canada, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and the New England region. The mountain and lake views were breathtaking and the hotel staff was fantastic as they demonstrated their gracious hospitality and gave the best of themselves to our conference attendees. Kudos to them for an excellent job in catering to our crowd.

The meetings started early and attendees had the opportunity of listening to a wide range of topics that influence the central service sterile processing technician’s daily job. You hear and read a lot about keynote speakers for any organizational programs, but I would like to state that all our speakers were exceptional speakers. The program this year included an array of diverse topics in the industry of central sterile processing; the human relations networking opportunities that the program offered will be unforgettable to all those who attended the program.

We were honored to have as part of our program, IAHCSMM president Richard Schule and executive director (and pillar of our organization) Betty Hanna. They shared with attendees IAHCSMM’s historical stories, our present status and our future goals. These are indeed exciting times and work in progress for the central aervice profession and a great time to be a central service professional. Among the faculty were recognized members of the sterilization and materials management world, such as Nancy Chobin, RN, CSPDM, sponsored by Getting/Castle; Steven R. Mayfield, BS, MBA, PhD, sponsored by American Hospital Association; Carole Van Antwerpen, RN, BSN, CIC, sponsored by the New York Department of Health; Jo Harbaugh, RN, BS, CGRN, sponsored by Olympus America; Becky Frederick, sponsored by United Bio Tech; Marcia Hardick, RN, BS, CSPDT, sponsored by Steris, Corp.; Ray Taurasi, MBA, CRCST, ACE, CHL, FCS, sponsored by Healthmark; Chuck Hughes, BS, sponsored by SPSMedical; and Charles Hancock, RAC, sponsored by Charles O. Hancock, Associates, Inc. We thank our speakers and their sponsors for providing us with such educational enhancement opportunity.

This year, the NYSACSP provided scholarships to members of our six affiliated chapters. The scholarship consisted on providing the winners with all of the expenses paid to attend the seminar. This year the winners were: Betsie Caiello, CNYACSP Chapter; Jose Baby, LIACS Chapter; Susan Guinane, NENYHCSP Chapter; Pina Campbell, NYACSP Chapter; Curtis Robinson, GRFLCSP Chapter. Congratulations to the winners!

Our sixth annual educational seminar could have not become a reality without the support and sponsorship of our corporate sponsors. We would like to acknowledge their contribution, as they are a major support system for us. Our corporate sponsors are: Advanced Sterilization Products, Aesculap, Healthmark, Jarit, Kimberly Clark, Mobile Instruments, TRE, and United Bio Tech.

Mark your calendars for our seventh annual educational seminar, to be held in Niagara Falls, N.Y. in 2009. For more information, visit www.nycentralservice.org.

Victoria Spencer is public relations chairperson of the New York State Association of Central Service Professionals.