Professional Activity Paper

Your Name: Patience Bekoe Date of Activity: 09/11/2015 & 11/07/2015

Describe the community service/professional activity/s you attended or participated with
I participated in two different professional activities. The first was Integrative Nursing in Action:
real-life application for patient care. This was held on 09/11/2015. It was a PowerPoint
presentation made by different expertise on how to use integrative nursing for symptom
management of patient with acute and chronic conditions in clinical or community based
settings. Featuring presenters included a graduate faculty from the University of Minnesota; the
center for spirituality and healing, spoke on the topic acupressure. Another presenter from the
American Music Therapy Association, talked about music therapy in managing patient
symptoms and lastly, there was a presenter from the University Of Arizona College Of Nursing
on Reiki therapy in managing patient symptoms.
The second professional activity I attended was the Tucson Cancer Action Network (TCAN),
which was held on 11/07/2015. The focus for the gathering was on symptom management for
cancer survivors. There were two different sections for this activity. In the first section, which
was in the early mornings, featuring presenters talked about both traditional and non-traditional
approaches to symptom management and wellbeing. After the presentations, group discussion
were held on palliative care and end of life care.
Where was this held and what was the program/ activity length
Both activities where held at the College of Nursing in room 117. The integrative nursing activity
took about 5 hours. It began around 12: 30 p.m. and ended around 5: 15 p. m. The Tucson Cancer
Action Network activity took about 4 hours. It started from 8 am and ended around 12 noon.
Both activity were open to both students and faculty.

Discuss the value of this experience to you

I choose these two specific activities because I know as a soon to be nurse, I will need this
valuable information to help manage my patient symptoms regarding any disease conditions.
Both activities talked about alternative ways to manage patient symptoms in addition to the
Western ways of treating patient symptoms. I felt I needed this information because in my
nursing profession, I will have patient who will prefer to manage their symptoms by using
alternatives like acupressure instead of taking pills. From the activities, I gained better
understanding about alternative nursing. I learned how to use music, acupressure, and reiki to
reduce distress associated with common symptoms of patients. In addition to the above, from the
cancer activity, I had better insight into palliative care and end of life care. I am looking into
oncology nursing after graduate school, therefore having this knowledge is essential to my future
career.
Would you recommend this community/ professional experience in the future, why or why?
Yes, I will recommend this professional experience to any nurse caring for patient in both the
community and clinical settings. I think that as nurses, one of our job duties is to manage patient
symptoms. Therefore, we nurses need to know both traditional and non-traditional ways of
managing patient symptoms. For the implementation of individualized care plan, we nurses do
for each of our patient, it will be necessary to apply this concept or experience into caring for our
patient. Therefore, I will recommend this experience for every nurse.