Genetics in Health Practice and Education Special Issue

Abstract

Genetic counselors have long been involved in the education of other health professionals, both formally and informally. As pointed out by Seibert in this issue, the NSGC professional status survey offers evidence that a substantial proportion of NSGC members develops and delivers education to others, including to other health professionals. In compiling a special issue on genetics in health practice and education, we sought to recognize the increasing importance of this work. Our intention was to publish papers that would support practitioners to base these efforts on sound educational principles and to illustrate the range of strategies and programs adopted internationally to incorporate genetics into ongoing education of health care providers. The issue begins with a description by McInerney of the scientific, clinical and education context in which this work is occurring. This paper highlights changes as well as areas in which change is desired, but not yet realized. The ultimate goal of health professional education is to facilitate a system change, i.e. the widespread incorporation of new knowledge, skills, values, behaviors into a health professional’s own clinical practice in order to reach optimal patient outcomes. A necessary component of any system change is collaboration among the different disciplines involved in it: consequently interdisciplinary collaboration is key to any strategy to educate and train health care professionals (Institute of Medicine 2001). This notion of collaboration means both the desire to share knowledge from a health care profession, as well as the curiosity to comprehend a health care topic from the perspective of other health care professions. Becoming skilled in sharing and understanding the perspective of multiple health care disciplines requires thoughtful and deliberate preparation. In this issue, Farndon and his colleagues emphasize the need for the collaborative involvement of statutory and professional organisations, as well as individual educators, to develop and deliver a national education strategy whilst recognising that engaging these stakeholders can be challenging. Collaboration among practitioners is found in a mentorship program for nurses in cancer risk counseling described by Masny et al., with genetic counselors mentoring participants in incorporating the risk assessment program into practice. Clarke (2006) suggests that health care professionals think of the knowledge and skills of each profession as components of its “toolkit.” In this analogy, health care professionals such as a primary care physician, nurse, or physical therapist may use a tool from another’s toolkit, perhaps a component of the knowledge, skills, values or behaviors that are central to the profession of genetic counseling. This would allow the health care provider to work more effectively. These tools can be formally captured in competencies and learning outcomes across the continuum of undergraduate education to continuing education in the workplace, as seen in two initiatives, one to enhance genetic education for health professionals across a national health system broadly (Farndon et al., this issue) and another specifically for nursing (Kirk et al., this issue). Equally important is the ability of health care providers to also know when their skill in using a tool is not sufficient to completely do the job and a genetic counseling professional is needed. The challenge of educating other health professionals to refer to a genetic counselor is familiar, J Genet Counsel (2008) 17:143–144 DOI 10.1007/s10897-008-9149-0