Karen Nauss
Karen Nauss is the Manager of Sterile Processing and Supply Chain Logistics at Mount Auburn Hospital where she has been working for the past 20 years. She is very passionate about the health care industry and has had various management and leadership roles for over 30 years. She is responsible for quality assurance, the department’s operational and capital budgets, and monitoring surgical instrumentation policies and procedures. Karen is an IAHCSMM Certified Registered Central Service Technician and has served on the IAHCSMM Board of Directors, Ortho Committee, Membership Committee and Executive Board of IAHCSMM. Currently she holds the role of Secretary/Treasurer position. Karen is the current President of the Massachusetts Chapter of Central Service Professionals and an AAMI Voting member for various committees. For the past three years, she has been working on a required certification bill to pass in Massachusetts. She has also presented at the IAHCSMM 2014 Conference and published a research paper on reprocessing of instrumentation exposed to CJD/TSEs.
President
Jo Wood
Jo M. Wood is currently the Central Processing Department Compliance & Education Supervisor at Boston Medical Center in Boston, MA. She entered the sterile processing industry six years ago as an entry-level technician. Through self-study and self-motivated clinical practice, she passed the CRCST exam before her 6-month anniversary. Jo was quickly promoted to Central Processing Technician II where she refined her clinical skill set and focused her energies on this key principle, “We can do this better”.
After fours years as a technician, she was promoted to the Compliance Supervisor, which quickly evolved into her current role as the Compliance & Education Supervisor. She currently focuses on recommending change based on the data she collects, the practices she sees and the ever-expanding industry guidance she reviews. This has lead to the development of best practice programs for technician training, sterilization and high-level disinfection record keeping, physical space maintenance, tray quality assessment, endoscope reprocessing and validation testing just to name a few.
Committed to moving the profession forward outside of her organization, Jo is very active in the IAHCSMM Massachusetts Chapter for Central Service Professionals and also holds the position Government Affairs Liaison. In this capacity, she leverages her significant political connections to garner support for a bill currently in legislation that would mandate certification for central sterile technicians in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Her work on this initiative has helped produced dramatic increases support for the program.
Vice President
Meaghan Gray
Secretary
Julie Hemenway
Julie has worked in the sterile processing field for the last 30 years. She is currently the Manager of Central Sterile Processing at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington Massachusetts.
Julie is the current Treasurer of the Massachusetts Chapter of Central Services professionals. She has been a member of IAHSCMM since 2006.
Treasurer
Ryan Furtado
Communications Officer