Editorial Introduction: New Journal Features.

Abstract

This issue of Journal of Genetic Counseling takes one small step and one large step in encouraging its readers to submit manuscripts for publication. The small step is an expanded and more detailed Instructions to Contributors, which will hopefully make manuscript preparation easier. The large step is the announcement of a new feature that will focus on case reports. Detailed reports and critiques of individual genetic counseling sessions are critical to patient care and to the growth of the profession. Case reports teach us about ourselves and our patients, and capture the deeply human side of genetic counseling in ways that large-scale research studies never can. For these reasons, Case Reports will be a new feature of the journal. Under the guidance of Kathryn Spitzer Kim who will coordinate the new feature, our goal is to ultimately include at least one case report with each issue of the journal. We would like to present a broad range of cases, therefore, the criteria for submission are loose and simple. Case reports should focus on the psychological and counseling issues that arise in working with patients and families. The journal is not interested in case reports that demonstrate new technologies, difficult diagnoses, or medical breakthroughs so much as reports that illustrate the psychological implications and counseling difficulties which result from advances in medical genetics. Counselors are encouraged to present routine or unusual cases that challenged their skills and created dilemmas, as well as the interventions they used. The reports need not have a good outcome where everybody lived happily ever after. Indeed, unresolved cases are as interesting and useful as those where the counselor was able to help resolve the situation.