Conversations with a nurse in cancer complementary and alternative medicine.

The following article is an interview with Patricia Davis, RN, BS, a technical information specialist at the National Cancer Institute. Davis graduated from Johns Hopkins Hospital as an RN in 1960. In the early 1960s, she worked at Alexandria Hospital in Virginia as a pediatric nurse and was in charge of the recovery room. Later in the 1960s, Davis was a stay-at-home mother and volunteered for the Red Cross in Maryland. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Davis worked at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, MD. She then returned to school and received a bachelor of science degree in behavioral science from the University of Maryland University College in 1981. After that accomplishment, she worked as a clinical research nurse and charge nurse from 1981–1991 on an adult oncology unit at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, then as a research oncology nurse, and then as supervisor of the oncology research nurses of the Medicine Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NIH. She currently is a technical information specialist for NCI, responsible for the complementary and alternative medicine information on www.cancer.gov, NCI’s Web site. Davis is a 20-year breast cancer survivor who was treated with an NCI breast cancer protocol.