N479 Professional Activity Evaluation Form

Your Name: Kayla Killigrew Date of Activity: 10/26/2020 and ended the second activity on

10/30/2020 Faculty name: Rajni Parmar

The first professional activity I attended was the American Association of Critical Care

Nurses COVID-19 Pulmonary, ARDS, and Ventilator Resources which was a four hour online

course educating and discussing how to care for patients with the concerns above. This course

also asked me questions throughout so I could develop critical thinking as well as show my

understanding. The second professional activity I attended was the free Yale course on The

Science of Well-Being which I completed four weeks of one hour a week online learning about

why our culture does not promote happiness, what truly makes a person happy, and techniques

on how to become happier. My role in both activities was to be a student and learn about what

was being discussed.

The first professional activity was extremely insightful for me. Due to the current

situation that our world is in, I feel that it is important to understand what happens to the body

when respiratory failure occurs as well as how different ventilator settings help staff achieve the

optimal oxygenation for a patient. This topic was heavy and difficult to learn during third

semester and this course was able to help solidify my understanding and put it in a simple

explanation for me. The second professional activity was probably the best activity I could have

picked for myself. In the process of living alone with no roommate for the first time and having

COVID hinder our daily lives I was really struggling with how to be happy, knowing what

makes me happy, and learning to avoid the things that unconsciously make me sad. I was living

day to day with no motivation except to find the next series to watch on Netflix. This course
helped me learn that happiness is something that takes hard work and the choices that are easy to

make are typically only creating short term happiness. I learned tips to question myself and my

choices to create the highest level of happiness for my life which I have been able to actually see

a different since starting this assignment four weeks ago.

In regard to the first experience, I plan on using this learning experience to be able to

determine the signs of respiratory failure and ARDS to help patients before they desaturate. I

can also use this as a guide to understand what ventilator setting a patient is on and why that

setting is best for them. The second activity I plan to use the tools they provided to me to help

keep me from nurse burnout. Being mindful of my happiness and knowing how to increase my

happiness will help me stay aware of my feelings about my job as wells as provide me tools to

change my feelings towards my job if negative emotions arise. This will also encourage me to

spread happiness and positivity instead of complaining and showing annoyance in different

settings and I feel this will also help me from getting annoyed with patients because I have will

the capacity to show more compassion with these tools.

I believe that the first experience I did should be required by every student in third

semester. This set of topics is difficult to learn and is thrown to third semester students early on

in the course. With so much information comes confusion and this activity breaks things down

in a different way than Doug did which can be helpful for students. I feel that this would be a

great supplement along with his lecture and can really help students understand such an

important topic. I feel that I would recommend the second activity to everyone because there are

a lot of tips that this class hits on how to work towards happiness that most people would not

even consider now-a-days. I feel that everyone could benefit from a class like this but the people

who are willing to listen and make a lifestyle and mindset change would benefit the most.