Are Australasian Genetic Counselors Interested in Private Practice at the Primary Care Level of Health Service?
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Are Australasian Genetic Counselors Interested in Private Practice at the Primary Care Level of Health Service? Vrunda Sane & Linda Humphreys & Madelyn Peterson
Received: 9 May 2014 / Accepted: 12 December 2014 # National Society of Genetic Counselors, Inc. 2015
Abstract This study explored the perceived interest in development of private genetic counseling services in collaboration with primary care physicians in the Australasian setting by online survey of members of the Australasian Society of Genetic Counselors. Four hypothetical private practice models of professional collaboration between genetic counselors and primary care physicians or clinical geneticists were proposed to gauge interest and enthusiasm of ASGC members for this type of professional development. Perceived barriers and facilitators were also evaluated. 78 completed responses were included for analysis. The majority of participants (84.6 %) showed a positive degree of interest and enthusiasm towards potential for clinical work in private practice. All proposed practice models yielded a positive degree of interest from participants. Model 4 (the only model of collaboration with a clinical geneticist rather than primary care physician) was the clearly preferred option (mean= 4.26/5), followed by Model 2 (collaboration with a single primary care practice) (mean=4.09/5), Model 3 (collaboration with multiple primary care clinics, multidisciplinary clinic or specialty clinic) (mean=3.77/5) and finally, Model 1 (mean=3.61/5), which was the most independent model of practice. When participants ranked the options in the order of preference, Model 4 remained the most popular first preference (44.6 %), followed by model 2 (21.6 %), model 3 (18.9 %) and model 1 was again least popular (10.8 %). There was no significant statistical correlation V. Sane : M. Peterson (*) School of Natural Sciences, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Brisbane, QLD 4069, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. Humphreys School of Medicine, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
between demographic characteristics (age bracket, years of work experience, current level of work autonomy) and participants’ preference for private practice models. Support from clinical genetics colleagues and the professional society was highly rated as a facilitator and, conversely, lack of such support as a significant barrier. Keywords Professional practice . Private practice . Professional development . Genomic medicine . Primary care . Family history . Risk assessment
Introduction It is increasingly obvious that the specialized services of clinical genetics and genetic counseling, in the era of genomic health care and personalized medicine, must move into the realm of primary health care and be proactively managed (Martin and Wilikofsky 2004; O’Daniel 2010; Hudson 2011; Orlando et al. 2013, Radford et al. 2013). However, primary care physicians (known as General Practitioners or GPs in Australasia)1 recognize that appropriate counseling for informed consent
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