Interdisciplinary Education for Genetic Counselors: Developing the Concept and Assessing the Need in Australasia
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PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
Interdisciplinary Education for Genetic Counselors: Developing the Concept and Assessing the Need in Australasia Kirsty J. Mann & Jessica A. Taylor & Paul A. James & Clara Gaff
Received: 18 July 2013 / Accepted: 9 April 2014 # National Society of Genetic Counselors, Inc. 2014
Abstract Interdisciplinary teams are increasingly common in healthcare as a means of improving patient care and there is consensus in the literature that a formalized framework of interdisciplinary education for health professionals is an advantageous means of professional development. To our knowledge no such application to genetic counseling has been reported. Prompted by limited direct exposure to the oncology processes discussed during genetic counseling sessions, two genetic counselors completed an interdisciplinary education exercise by observing various oncology settings. As intended we gained a deeper understanding of the: (1) Roles of other health professionals within the oncology interdisciplinary team, (2) Patient experience of cancer screening and treatment, and (3) Clinical processes relevant to cancer genetic counselors’ discussions. In addition, further benefits resulted from (4) Insight into how patients and referring providers utilize the FCC within wider oncology care and (5) Strengthening of relationships between the FCC and other oncology-related teams. The observation experience and resulting learnings are described in this paper. To investigate wider application of this novel initiative, a survey of Australasian genetic counselors was conducted, finding that
Kirsty J. Mann and Jessica A. Taylor are joint first authors This manuscript has not been published previously and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Confidentiality has been maintained by the use of pseudonyms in this manuscript. K. J. Mann (*) : J. A. Taylor : P. A. James Genetic Medicine and Familial Cancer Centre, Royal Melbourne Hospital, C/o Post Office, Grattan Street Parkville, Melbourne, VIC 3050, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C. Gaff Department of Medicine and Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
genetic counselors mostly source knowledge about oncology procedures through indirect means and that, overall, anecdotal descriptions from patients were the most common information source (74 %). Over 95 % of respondents expected that interdisciplinary observations would be a beneficial part of their professional development and almost 90 % expected the program to be potentially feasible in their workplace. These findings indicate there is a role for interdisciplinary education to be considered as a formal continual learning tool for genetic counselors. Keywords Genetic counseling . Interdisciplinary education . Interprofessional education . Cancer genetic counseling . Professional development . Australasia
Introduction Interdisciplinary teams are increasingly common in healthcare as a means of improving patient care (Petri 2010; Pruthi et al. 2007; Thistlethwaite and Moran 2010;
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