Professional Knowledge Paper

Professional Knowledge and Abilities

Sharita Lyons

GEN/200

May 9, 2011

Debra Wenzel

Professional Knowledge and Abilities

The professional association I chose is Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Inc. (SCDAA). SCDAA was started in 1971 by fifteen community sickle cell organization representatives. They met at “Wingspread,” a Racine, Wisconsin conference center as quest of the Johnson Foundation (Whitten, C.F.). The National Association for Sickle Cell Disease was created from this meeting. In 1994 the name was changed to Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Inc. They provide leadership on national levels establishing understanding of the “negative impact of sickle cell disease on the health, economic, social and educational well-being of the individual and his or her family, and to create awareness of the requirements for resolution” (Whitten).

The SCDAA will increase my knowledge in the medical field. I plan to work in a long-term care facility in the Health Administration area, eventually getting a degree in nursing. I have the sickle cell anemia trait and this disease runs in my family. I have had four aunts and two uncles to die from this disease. My niece is seventeen years old and has sickle cell anemia. She has been in and out of Childrens Medical Center in Dallas, Texas all of her life. It had me thinking with all the advance medicine we have today, there have got to be something different that can be done. It is not easy watching someone you love going through what she is enduring and not be able to do anything to help ease her pain. Right now there is no known cure for sickle cell anemia. When she have a “crisis” that is what we call it, all the hospital can do is give her morphine to manage the pain. This will be what she has to look forward to until a cure is found.

Sickle cell anemia is a high priority to me because it is personal. I will continue to increase my knowledge of this disease in hopes that there...