Martina Tierney OT
Founder & Clinical Director
Seating Matters
Martina Tierney is an Occupational Therapist, Author, Educator and Clinical Director of Seating Matters.
Throughout Martina’s 30 year career, she has worked in acute and community care, nursing homes and rehab, specialising in clinical seating provision.
During this time working with patients, Martina soon discovered the profound effects that unsafe seating could have on patient outcomes and struggled to find chairs which met their clinical and functional needs.
After outlining the different features her patients required, including pressure care and easy adjustability, Martina, with the help of her engineer husband James, set a goal to change the world through healthcare seating, by designing clinical, therapeutic chairs that would meet needs of bed-bound and low mobility patients.
Martina and James began designing custom chairs to meet the needs of Martina’s individual patients and soon decided to help and support other clinicians who were experiencing the same challenges.
With the help of their 3 sons, Jonathan, Ryan and Martin, ‘Seating Matters’ was born, working to help clinicians and their patients globally.
Karen Houchins BSN, RN, CWCN
Clinical Consultant
Wound Care and Bariatrics
Karen Houchins, BSN, RN, CWCN is a Clinical Consultant for Wound Care and Bariatrics. She has been an RN for over 35 years in acute care facilities and has taught wound care at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She received her wound certification through WEB WOC Nursing Education Program at Metropolitan State University, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, (St. Paul, Minnesota). Karen joined Arjo in 2011 and has assisted multiple facilities in the development of Pressure Injury Prevention policies, product algorithms and outcome based programs to decrease pressure injury rates. She also supports many facilities with Prevalence data collection and reporting, as well as provide CE programs, rounding, clinical education, product education, and inservicing. In addition, Karen has held roles as account executive for a medical sales organization and clinical resource specialist, supporting advanced wound care products & NPWT for Smith & Nephew. Since 2011, Karen has been an active board member and Director of Communications for the Hampton Roads WOCN affiliate. She is a member of the Mid-Atlantic region WOCN and participates on the scholarship committee. Karen enjoys spending time with her family, the beach, as well as loves reading and machine embroidery.
Melvajean Eason
Clinical Consultant
Arjo
Melvajean Eason has 32 years of clinical experience as an Occupational Therapist primarily in the areas of long term care, acute care, home health, industrial rehab, and ergonomics. She currently works as a Clinical Consultant for Arjo, providing clinical consultative services for Safe Patient Handling & Mobility (SPHM) programs (2007 - present).