MY CONTRIBUTIONS

My work at Prashanti: Projects

FILE MANAGEMENT

Prashanti was established in 1996 and since then there have been lots of patients who have been tested and treated at Prashanti and Orchids Breast Health Clinic. As a result of this, Prashanti has a lot of old files which don't have digital records. Hence, I made an excel sheet with all the important information which was needed from each of the old files and sat down and filled in the excel sheet with information from the files. In this way, I created digital records for hundreds of files. Thus, finding out information about old cases or gathering cases for research projects has become easier as all the information is now available easily in the form of excel sheets.

BROCHURE

I wrote a brochure for Prashanti, along with another intern, Saaz. The brochure includes everything about Prashanti from its awareness camps to the state-of-the-art equipment available for diagnosis and treatment in their screening buses and at Orchids Breast Health Clinic. This brochure was made with the intention to send it to patients or interested investors as an attachment via email. While creating this brochure, I learnt a lot about the organization as well as how it works, and it was an amazing experience to collaborate with Saaz on this project.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has become a part and parcel of our everyday lives and thus it has become an excellent tool to reach out to people. Since one of the main objectives of Prashanti is to make people aware about Breast Cancer and ways to diagnose and treat it, social media acts as a great tool for them to achieve this objective. Thus, I helped them by creating posts about their upcoming fundraisers, services available at Orchids Breast Health Clinic, facts and myths related to Breast Cancer and many similar posts. In fact, the logo for Prashanti and their cover picture on their facebook page have been designed by me.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Being a Breast Cancer Organization, Prashanti Cancer Care Mission is involved in many research projects. Currently they are working on Triple Negative Breast Cancer Patients and doing a genomic assay for their patients. Through this they are also giving genetic counselling to patients and their families. I got an opportunity to participate in this research project my analysing a few genomic assay reports and creating a few lists of genes which were associated with a higher risk of cancer. Thus, after I created the gene bank, I identified the genes which were common in many of the genomic assay panels, so that the organization knew which all genes should be assessed without fail in a genomic assay of Triple Negative Breast Cancer Patients and their families.

FUNDRAISER: "THREE WOMEN"

Prashanti Cancer Care Mission had organized an Indian musical by the name of "Three Women" to raise funds for Herceptin, which is a drug. I was involved in the planning process and I also promoted the event in my school, in my society, among my friends and amongst my family and I was successful in collecting 13,500 Rs. by selling tickets. On the day of the event, I was actively involved in directing the people to their seats and I was also able to solve an issue with the seat numbers and the colour coded tickets. I was also involved in the backstage activities and it was challenging. I was given the job to take the actresses to the other side of the stage as the auditorium did not have a path that connected the two wings. I had to make sure that the actresses had everything that they needed like water bottles, tissues, etc. Also, I had to delegate responsibilities to the other volunteers. It was definitely an incredible experience, as I learnt a lot about leadership and event management.

AWARENESS AND SCREENING CAMPS

Prashanti conducts many awareness and screening camps in rural areas, offices and companies. I was really interested to see how the women respond to this kind of sensitive information and I also wanted to see how the conduct the tests. So I went to two of the camps and was given the task to direct patients to the person who was collecting personal history and then tell them where to go next. The camp was very educational and there I got to learn:

The process of collecting personal history of the patient.
The process of explaining Breast Cancer, its causes, its symptoms and how and why to carry out monthly Self-Breast Examinations.
The process of sanitizing and preparing the available rooms for Clinical Breast Examinations and Colposcopy.
The process of carrying out a Clinical Breast Examination and how to see symptoms.

4TH INDO-BRITISH BREAST CANCER SYMPOSIUM

Prashanti Cancer Care Mission hosted the 4th Indo-British Breast Cancer Symposium from 17th to 19th August 2018. I got the opportunity to be a volunteer at the event and I had tasks like directing people to the auditorium, giving them their Identification Cards and completing their registrations, passing the mics in the audience for audience questions, directing the people to the dining hall and collecting presentations from the speakers. It was an incredible experience as while working, I got an opportunity to listen to the top oncologists, breast surgeons, pathologists and radiologists. From those lectures, I was able to obtain a lot of information about newer technologies in Breast Cancer diagnosis and treatment. Also, since I am doing my Extended Essay on Hormone Receptor Status and Breast Cancer Recurrence, I got a lot of valuable information from the lectures.