Welcome to the Introduction to Integrative Therapies and Healing Practices course. We're excited to explore how you can bring these therapies and healing practices into your professional and personal life to alleviate pain and suffering and enhance well-being. My guess is that you work with patients or clients who are experiencing health issues, such as dealing with pain, nausea, or even difficulties with sleep, or perhaps are distressed and anxious. There's a huge need to find ways to alleviate this discomfort and manage symptoms of acute and chronic disease, or even simply dealing with the stresses of everyday life. This course introduces you to some therapies and practices that can help. My name is Terri Verner, and I'm the Director of Integrated Services for a large health system in Minnesota, and Graduate Faculty at the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing. I'm a registered nurse, and I have my Doctor of Nursing Practice in Integrative Health and Healing. I've experienced in a variety of settings and most recently led integrative health programs in ambulatory and acute care settings. I'm trained in a variety of integrative therapies, and I'm passion about integrative health as a means to achieve optimal well-being and resilience. I'm excited to share with you some of these concepts. I'm Robin Austin. I'm a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, and Graduate Faculty for the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing. I have a broad range of healthcare experiences. To start, I'm a registered nurse with a master's degree in nursing education in a focus in nursing education, and a Doctorate of Nursing Practice specializing in informatics. Prior to nursing, I earned a degree of chiropractic, and has spent numerous hours of continuing education in the field of acupuncture, clinical nutrition, functional medicine, and exercise rehab. I'm also very excited to share the great potential of integrative therapies with you. This course is aimed at professionals, such as nurses, physicians, physical therapists, social workers, chaplains, psychologists, and others who want to learn about integrative therapies for symptom management for overall well-being. This course really provides a framework for how you can explore it and incorporate these therapies into your practice in your working with patients and clients. In addition, discussing various categories of integrative therapies and their role in health and healthcare, the course provides you with skills to partner with clients and patients around the use of these therapies. By the end of the course, you'll be able to discuss the evidence-based for integrative therapies in general, with an understanding of some of the challenges that research in this area, as well as be able to identify reliable resources of evidence-based information. In addition, you'll be able to explain in general the safety and quality considerations you need to understand to your coworkers and also patients. You will apply these skills that you learn in the course in a peer-reviewed project. For this project, you will conduct an organizational needs assessment that will help you identify how to best introduce integrative therapies at your current workplace or another setting. The goal is to leave the course with a strategy for implementing integrative therapies. You'll start working on this project in week four, and share it with other learners at the end of week five. This not only gives you an opportunity to get feedback on your own project, but to also learn from others and share resources as well. I always find it interesting to learn from others and different organizations about the strategies they use, and how they overcome potential challenges. I wanted to end with a bit of a challenge. If you're a healthcare professional, some of these concepts may be new to you and may not completely aligned with your current practice. Our hope is that you approach this material with beginner's mind and be open to shifting your perspective to a more integrative approach. We look forward to sharing our expertise and how to use integrative approaches for health and healing in your work and your personal life. We're sure that you will gain new skills that will benefit you and those you care for.
