Tag Archives: genetic counseling practice

by | April 23, 2018 · 12:12 AM

Is Test Uptake A Good Measure of Genetic Counseling Effectiveness? I Don’t Think So

The last few years have seen a growing trend for patients to undergo genetic testing without first seeing a genetic counselor or other genetic specialist. As I have commented before, genetic counselors are no longer the gatekeepers of genetic testing. Anyone can obtain DNA analysis through non-genetics specialists or any health care provider, on Amazon.com and other internet sites, and at their workplaces (which, honestly, makes me very uneasy; it is going to be awfully difficult for some employers to keep their noses out of their employees’ genetic information and it may provide an opportunity to chisel away at the protections afforded by GINA). Many genetic counselors have accepted this as a fact of life, even if we are not altogether comfortable with it.

Historically, the genetic counseling profession has done a poor job of demonstrating its value to the health care system. Our importance seemed pretty obvious to us and because we didn’t have much in the way of competition we were never strongly motivated to undertake large scale studies to prove our worth.

Comparative studies are starting to address the value of pre-test counseling by a genetic counselor, particularly in the field of hereditary cancer genetic testing. This as a good thing.  Still, it bothers me if studies claim that genetic counseling is failing patients because fewer people undergo genetic testing if they need to see a genetic counselor first. Sure, genetic testing should be readily available to those who need it, and barriers need to be removed. If seeing a genetic counselor turns out to be one of those barriers, then we need to do something about that. But test uptake may not always be in the best interests of patients.

For example, the most common reason an unaffected patient declines genetic testing after seeing me for hereditary cancer counseling is that, for the moment, they are the “wrong” person to test to most accurately determine their hereditary cancer risks. Even though the patient may technically meet standard criteria for genetic testing, they may still not be the best person to test within the context of their specific family history. Not undergoing genetic testing is not due to a lack of timely access to me, the cost of my services, or me somehow talking them out of testing. Instead, after reviewing their family history, it turns out that testing their mother with breast cancer or their brother with colon cancer is the most appropriate person to test before deciding if the patient and other unaffected relatives should undergo testing. If that affected relative has a normal genetic test result, then testing my patient and other relatives is usually a waste of money.

It is also difficult to interpret a negative test result in a family where a mutation has not already been identified. Now, I am a grizzled veteran of the Family Dynamics Wars, and I realize that sometimes that affected relative is deceased or just not willing to undergo testing, and you have to make do with the realities of the situation at hand. And, of course, this argument does not apply to testing patients who have been diagnosed with cancer (although it may apply in situations where patients meet NCCN guidelines but not their insurer’s criteria for coverage, but an affected relative does meet their insurer’s criteria). Still, testing an affected relative should be utilized whenever feasible because it is clinically and economically the most effective strategy. Therefore, if a study finds that test uptake is increased when patients do not first see a genetic counselor, the researchers are obliged to demonstrate that this is not simply due to more cases of the “wrong” person being tested or the providers not willing to take the time to work with the extended family.

Along these same lines, in many situations, even genetic test results of an affected relative are often uninformative for risk assessment. Such families may still need to be followed as high risk, with screening and risk reducing protocols based on family history and clinician judgment. Effectiveness studies therefore need to investigate whether there are differences in clinical recommendations provided to patients who see a genetic counselor compared to those who do not.

Studies of genetic counseling vs. no genetic counseling also need to provide data on patient adherence to screening and other risk reduction guidelines. Increased test uptake is not particularly helpful if patients do not have the motivation or wherewithal to undergo breast MRI, salpingo-oophorectomy, join the Annual Colonoscopy For Life Club, or whatever else is recommended. Other outcomes that effectiveness studies should address include communication of test results to family members, interpretation of variants of uncertain significance, and patients’ psychological adaptation to their risk status. I imagine many of you reading this posting can suggest additional outcomes that need to be addressed.

My other concern about reduced genetic counselor involvement with pre-test counseling is that “counseling” will eventually be reduced to a pamphlet or a brief video, perhaps provided by the testing lab itself. This is already a major concern with how NIPT is presented to pregnant women, and I can see it becoming a problem in other areas of genetic testing. No matter how earnestly labs may claim that their educational material is not a subtle sales pitch, they are only human and can easily be blinded by their business needs. This is an area where GCs can develop better and less biased educational materials.

If research demonstrates that other genetic testing delivery models are more effective than, or at least non-inferior to (non-inferior sounds like a back-handed compliment,doesn’t it?), the traditional approach of First See A GC Before Your Test, then the genetic counseling profession should re-focus itself and use our many other skills to work towards improving patients’ lives and the medical care system. Besides, I have never liked conflating genetic counseling with genetic testing.

I do worry, though, that either the research will not be conducted, or that, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, market forces will dictate testing strategies. I am not concerned that it would portend the end of the genetic counseling profession. Genetic counselors are forever expanding their professional roles, and in fact have continually reinvented themselves since, well, we first invented ourselves in the 1970s. Like David Bowie, we never stood still and as soon as you had us pinned down as Ziggy Stardust, all of a sudden we were Aladdin Sane, and already sprouting within him are the seeds of The Thin White Duke (well, okay, it’s a stretch comparing genetic counselors to David Bowie, but you get my point). What matters is that all patients affected with or at risk for hereditary disorders receive the most competent and compassionate care delivered effectively, equitably, and timely.

Bobbin Sane
(Graphic by Emily Singh)

Leave a comment

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | July 4, 2017 · 10:42 PM

Genetic Counseling ≠ Genetic Testing

I know that I am old and curmudgeonly. I acknowledge that my musical tastes and my concept of genetic counseling are hopelessly stuck in the 20th century. I sense in a frighteningly helpless way that my generation of genetic counselors is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the profession. It is like watching the air slowly leak out of my inflatable raft in the middle of a swift flowing river and realizing I don’t have a lifejacket. If you press me on it and buy me a few drinks, I will let slip out an admission that DNA analysis technologies like ion semiconductor sequencing and pyrosequencing are incomprehensible magic to me. I feel like I have become a visitor in my home country and I can barely speak the native tongue anymore.

So this paradox might sound like a useless warning flare fired from a sinking vessel before it goes under, a futile attempt to alert my younger upstream genetic counseling colleagues who are new to navigating these tricky waters: I love genetic testing; I hate genetic testing.

Genetic counselors and genetic testing have grown hand in hand since the early 1970s. At least in the US, one would not have flourished without the other. Amniocentesis, CVS, carrier screening, maternal serum screening, ultrasound, DNA sequencing, microarrays, and other genetic testing advances have all been ushered into medical practice by the genetic counseling profession. The tests generated a need for our unique skill sets along with the security of employment and the financial wherewithal to support our positions. Without genetic testing, we wouldn’t be where we are today. So what’s to complain about, even for a complainer like me?

Well, I have two related complaints. My first complaint is the ever-expanding list of genetic tests that we feel obliged to offer our patients in prenatal, oncology, and other settings. Don’t get me wrong – I think genetic testing can be incredibly valuable from both a medical and a psychological perspective. But I wind up spending way too much valuable counseling time highlighting the differences between Panel A and Panel B and the relative merits of this lab versus that lab. And, oh, by the way, many of the genes included on these panels are largely irrelevant to your particular clinical concerns. I hear similar plaints from some of my colleagues in prenatal – this carrier test for 75 conditions or that one for 200 conditions, or this prenatal screen versus that prenatal screen.

It is often not clear to me why some of these tests are part of clinical practice to begin with. Probably a variety of forces are behind it – the push from labs to offer more tests and to compete with other labs; the common trait of genetic counselors to be early adopters of new technologies; trying to show that we are at the cutting edge of genetics; our obsession with offering ALL options to ALL comers; demands from patients and referring physicians; worry that if we don’t offer the shiniest, newest products our patient population will go shopping at the next medical center down the road, or Heaven forbid, shop online; and a nagging fear of being sued or at the very least of providing sub-standard care. As I have written about previously, sometimes genetic tests became standard of care before they were thoroughly vetted, evaluated, and debated.

Which leads me to my second complaint. There is a tendency, sometimes overtly and sometimes silently, to conflate genetic testing and genetic counseling. Yeah, sure, genetic testing is an important part of what many of us do, but my job title says counselor, not tester. For some genetic counselors, testing is not even part of their job. We educate, provide clinical expertise to other care providers, and participate in research. There are other services we provide to our patients, not the least of which should be an intense psychological, personal, and occasionally angst-filled exploration of why patients might even want testing to begin with, never mind which test they want. We are there to support and work with them when no testing was done, when testing is irrelevant, or when testing was done in the past and we are helping them adapt to their new medical and emotional status. Let’s look at what your worries and fears are, and why you are in my office to begin with. What has it meant for your life that you or your child or your sister have this condition? What resources do you need? How have your loved ones been supportive or not of you? What are your health care and life goals? Or bigger picture questions such as what are the medical, economic, and social impacts of genetic disease?

At times I think that genetic counseling for psychiatric conditions is the last pure form of genetic counseling – reliable genetic testing is not available for most psychiatric conditions, so you are “forced” to rely on your counseling and clinical skills. Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but you catch my drift. I remember my long time colleague Vickie Venne once saying to me that cancer genetic counseling became a lot less interesting to her once BRCA testing became available. While not denying the many benefits of BRCA testing and how it has helped save lives, there is a measure of wisdom in Vickie’s statement.

As a profession, we should extol and support our role in ordering and interpreting genetic testing. But we, or at least I, don’t want testing to be our defining activity. Yes, as one of our skill sets, we are pretty damn good at it. But let’s not forget that it is a counseling session, not an Informed Consent session or a sales pitch. We should boast more about our abilities to help patients make sense of genetic disease for their lives in a psychologically meaningful way, and testing is only one means of achieving this goal. Genetic counselors are not Genetic Testers; Genetic Counseling is not Genetic Testing.

 

 

 

7 Comments

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , , ,

by | January 3, 2015 · 5:53 PM

Resta’s Rules of Genetic Counseling

You will not find these pearls of wisdom in Psyche and Helix, Psychosocial Genetic Counseling, A Guide To Genetic Counseling, or the Journal of Genetic Counseling. I am certain that they will never be the source of correct responses on genetic counseling board certification exams. These insights are based on personal observations made during my 3+ decades of genetic counseling practice. There is almost no research to back them up but they are gospel truth nonetheless. Well, at least they seem true.

 

Unknown41RNFQVXQAL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Unknown-110897_015_006

1) All interactions with patients are primarily psychosocial encounters, no matter how much we or patients consciously or unconsciously try to focus on facts and figures.

2) All research studies are flawed in some way. Therefore, all facts, figures, and risk predictions that we so confidently quote are wrong, with the possible exception of Mendelian segregation ratios (but even there…). Quite often, several seemingly well designed studies about the same topic will produce conflicting results.

3) Which risk figures we choose to quote reflect more about our own unconscious biases, training, and professional influences than it does about the robustness of the statistics themselves.

4) It often turns out that patients with the lowest a priori risk have the highest chance of actually testing positive for a gene mutation and, conversely, the highest risk patients actually have the lowest chance of testing positive for a gene mutation (and I am not altogether making this up).

5) In a family that looks like it could have two different genetic syndromes, one syndrome highly likely and the second syndrome fairly unlikely, if you don’t test the family for the less likely syndrome they will inevitably be tested by another care provider some day and test positive, and then you will foolish and insecure (especially if the other care provider is not a geneticist). But if when you initially see the family you do the testing for the less likely syndrome, the testing will be normal and you will kick yourself for wasting healthcare dollars. Perhaps this is a corollary to Rule Number 4.

6) As I have previously pointed out in The Resta Paradox* there is a sub-set of patients who believe that the most improbable things will happen to them. If you say to such a patient “The odds of this happening are one in a thousand” the patient will inevitably respond “Well, I will be that one in a thousand. Rare things always happen to me.” To some extent, this is an example of Abby Lippman’s key insight from 35 years ago that patients inevitably dichotomize odds – either it will happen to me or it won’t. It may also be a defense mechanism, a way for patients to prepare themselves for the possibility of an unlikely undesired outcome. Trying to reassure such patients with even more statistics is an exercise in futility; these situations require good basic counseling skills. Really, when it comes down to it, who cares what numbers they choose to believe? A better counseling approach is to acknowledge the patient’s viewpoint and then explore why they believe these numbers and how that perception affects their decision-making.

Graphics by Emily Singh

 

7) If you make a clerical error, no matter how tiny and seemingly insignificant, it will come back to haunt you in unforeseeable and kafkaesque ways, and it will be nearly impossible to undo the error. My father, a career clerk, used to tell me ad nauseam “The world would be a better place if there were more good clerks.” Dad, bless his clerical heart, was right.

8)  The patients for whom you put in the most effort – or pre-appointment preparation – are the ones most likely to complain about you or to no-show for their appointments.

9) Nobody – not our billing departments or even health insurers themselves – understands insurance coverage for genetic counseling and genetic testing. Genetics itself is far simpler to understand than billing for genetics.

10) There will be at least one genetic counselor at your institution who is on maternity leave or planning a wedding.

The Resta Paradox (graphic by Emily Singh)

* – The astute DNA Exchange reader may have noted a tendency on the author’s part to name things after himself – Resta’s Rules, The Resta Paradox, RestaEZ Gene Panels. Admittedly this is shameless ego stroking. But it is better than an eponymous syndrome. With all due respect and apologies to our genetic counseling colleague Ann Smith, my preference is for a medical cure or a clever theory to be associated with my surname.

And, once again, a special thanks to Emily Singh, daughter extraordinaire, for help with graphics.

9 Comments

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , , ,

by | July 1, 2012 · 5:19 PM

The NSGC Financial Conflict of Interest Policy for The Development of Practice Guidelines: Good But Not Good Enough

Practice Guidelines are the collective clinical and ethical face that a healthcare profession presents to other care providers and to the public. The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) has authored a dozen guidelines on topics such as cystic fibrosis, pedigree nomenclature, and cancer risk assessment. I have been involved with developing some of these guidelines, and have found them to be thoughtful, insightful, and clinically helpful.

Where NSGC’s Practice Guidelines fall short, however, is in the underlying conflict of interest policy. The most recent conflict of interest policy I could find, dated August of 2011, indicates that  NSGC members who wish to be part of a  practice guideline committee  must sign a conflict of interest disclosure and, if a potential conflict of interest is identified, outlines how the conflict will be managed or resolved.  The conflict of interest guidelines further state that members with conflicts of interest should comprise a minority of the committee.  NSGC’s Conflict of Interest Advisory Group is responsible for ensuring that conflict of interest guidelines are properly carried out.

These are  important checks and balances, but in my view, they do not go far enough in assuring that clinical practice guidelines are free of undue influences or of the appearance of financial conflicts of interest. In matters of clinical policy, even the appearance of a conflict of interest can be critical to the ethical integrity of the guidelines and how they are perceived.

Steps For Improvement

So how can the NSGC financial conflict of interest policy be improved?  The first step is modify the policy to be fully in line with the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice. The IOM’s recommendations would not be that difficult to implement, and subscribing to them would assure the public that NSGC strives hard to follow high national ethical standards. And, as I have noted previously about other NSGC conflict of interest policies, the policy should be prominently displayed on the publicly available portion of the NSGC website.

Second, NSGC must restrict the role of genetic counselors who work for or have a financial stake in (such as owning individual stock in a laboratory, being paid consulting fees, or receiving speaking honoraria) private laboratories when the practice guidelines relate to a service or test provided by that laboratory.

Think about it for a moment. If NSGC were to issue guidelines that recommend, say, a panel of genetic tests for autism on all newborns, would it not look questionable if the chair of the practice guideline committee and one or two of the committee members were employed by or had stock in a lab that ran a large number of autism panels? Judges recuse themselves from legal cases where there is even a remote possibility of conflict of interest; genetic counselors should have the same good sense to do so as well.

In my view, genetic counselors with a potential conflict of interest should not chair the committee, should not have a voting role on the acceptance of the guidelines, and they should not be listed as an author of published guidelines. Of course, lab-based genetic counselors have unique expertise and insight that could be valuable in developing practice guidelines, and it is reasonable to include such counselors as expert advisors to the committee.

I have one more controversial recommendation: NSGC should make its sources of corporate income publicly available. If NSGC supports a policy that could directly benefit private corporations, the public has a right to know about the financial relationships between NSGC and those corporations.

Keeping Our Moral Compass Pointed To True North

One might counter that NSGC is a small organization and excluding lab-based counselors from certain practice guidelines committees would be impractical. But I do not buy that argument. Lab-based counselors could still have an advisory role, and there are plenty of non lab-based counselors with expertise in all areas of genetic counseling. After all, those labs serve genetic counselors who use the tests to provide clinical care and thus presumably are also experts on the topic. And in those rare instances where there might truly be an inadequate number of clinically based  counselors with adequate expertise, NSGC should consider partnering with other genetics organizations to develop the guidelines.

I can already hear hooting and hollering, and calls from my good colleagues in the Industry SIG and NSGC leadership to have me boiled with my own pudding. Please do not get me wrong.  I am not criticizing lab-based counselors or NSGC leadership, nor am I suggesting that any genetic counselor is less than ethical. Indeed, I think lab-based counselors play a critical role for their fellow genetic counselors, for other clinicians, and for patients.  NSGC leadership typically works very hard to be an ethically sound organization, and NSGC is not alone in having a conflict of interest policy that could be enhanced.  This is an opportunity for NSGC to be a leader and set a model for all professional medical organizations.

Surveying the landscape of genetic counseling practice and guideline development, I am not aware of major problems that have resulted from financial conflicts of interest (of course, that could be the result of my own blind spots). But we are in the midst of a rapid expansion of genomic medicine, and we must not appear to be ethically compromised as we branch out into new professional services. The blind spots that we all possess, as well as the public perception of our motivations, make it critical for us take great pains to stay as ethically transparent as possible. Reputations take a long time to be earned, are stunningly easy to lose, and painfully difficult to re-establish. To borrow a line from the late Ray Bradbury, I am not writing about conflict of interest to predict its future – I am writing to prevent it.

3 Comments

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | January 15, 2012 · 1:04 PM

Blind Spot: Genetic Counselors and Financial Conflict of Interest

Many people don’t know that the human eye has a blind spot in its field of vision. There is a part of the world that we are literally blind to. The problem is, sometimes our blind spots shield us from things that really shouldn’t be ignored. Sometimes our blind spots keep our lives bright and shiny.
– Meredith Grey, character from ABC TV Series Grey’s Anatomy

It’s safe to say that genetic counselors are not in it for the money. I prefer to believe that our practice is guided by what we perceive to be our patients’ best clinical and psychosocial interests, with no concern for fiscal gain for ourselves. But however bright and shiny we may be, we are only human and subject to the same economic pressures, character flaws, and temptations as everybody else. I am not claiming that there is wide scale greed and corruption in the profession. What worries me more is that our blind spot can prevent us from detecting or admitting the possibility of a conflict of interest.

This topic has not been openly discussed among genetic counselors, so it’s about time the subject was broached. I suspect this discussion will evoke discomfort, defensiveness, and not a little denial.  Financial conflicts of interest might arise in many areas of genetic counseling but I will explore just three: when genetic counselors work for laboratories as expert advisors on genetic testing, when we need to justify our clinical positions to hospital administrators, and at our  annual education conference.

 Medical laboratories and their employees are driven by a genuine desire to help referring physicians and their patients. I have been uniformly impressed by the help I receive from lab counselors who have walked me through the testing maze in complicated clinical situations. But let’s face it – labs are profit-driven corporate entities. If an insufficient number of tests are ordered, the laboratory and its investors lose money. Hopefully laboratory directors do not set monthly test quotas (“Resta, I better see 150 TRFs for our new autism screen next month or you are out of a job.”). But if the number of tests drops below a certain threshold, some manager somewhere is going to notice. Labs may choose to discontinue that particular test, but more likely they will try to boost test uptake.
The need to make a profit, with the attendant job security for us, is a powerful motivator that can subconsciously influence conversations between lab counselors and healthcare providers. Think of those gray situations where multiple tests can be ordered but it is unclear just how likely they are to be positive or clinically useful (“Well, this doctor does not want to leave any stone unturned  in working up this family so maybe I should suggest Test X that she hadn’t thought of, even if is very unlikely to be positive and will not change clinical management.”).
Or consider labs that offer SNP testing for risk assessment for common disorders like diabetes or cardiovascular disease, tests that do not yet have proven clinical value. One might justify such testing under the rubric of “Patients Have A Right To Know.” But patients also assume that because a test is available and yields a precise sounding risk estimate, it must have some clinical value, and therefore patients think they have a right to know. Is offering such tests motivated by an altruistic desire to ensure that patients’ rights are not denied, by profit-seeking, or by misguided clinical judgment? The answer is murky.

Genetic counselors who work in medical centers are just as liable to conflicts of interest as their laboratory counterparts. In these tough economic times, we are being called upon to justify our jobs to administrators who face dwindling budgets and might have less of an appreciation for clinical and psychosocial issues. In response, we might look to increase our patient volumes, and one way to do that is to expand the indications for referral to genetic counseling beyond what might be considered “medically necessary.” You might then tell your boss that broadened guidelines will increase downstream revenue through more extensive screening and increased rates of prophylactic surgery. Surely we are not talking our patients into salpingo-oophorectomies or breast MRIs to enrich the hospital’s coffers or to secure our jobs, but that is the  message we are communicating to hospital administration (for the moment, ignoring the fact that we have little data to prove that assertion).

Or think about fetal diagnostic testing through maternal serum, which will presumably reduce the need for amniocentesis and CVS. Even if maternal serum testing proves to be not quite  diagnostic and still require invasive testing for verification, First Positive rates will be much lower than with traditional serum/ultrasound screening. This in turn might lower departmental revenue by reducing the number of counseling referrals,  invasive procedures, and karyotypes. Just how will those economic considerations affect our job security, how we evaluate these new tests, how we present them to our patients, and how we integrate them into our clinics?

The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC), our collective face that we present to the public, has expanded its financial relationship with private laboratories. For example, in 2011, about 25% of the revenue from the Annual Education Conference came from corporate exhibitors and sponsors (contributing ~$216,000 of the total conference revenue of ~$820,000). Our professional relationships with labs are critical on many levels. But  accepting money  from them tacitly – if not officially – condones their services. NSGC would probably not accept certain labs as exhibitors or sponsors if those labs offered questionable  services, like using genetic testing to find the perfect mate or to improve your sex life through nutrigenomics. Excluding some labs lends a certain amount of legitimacy to those labs  from whom we do accept funds.

And let’s not forget those breakfasts and evening debaucheries that some private labs sponsor at every Annual Education Conference, or those  exhibitor booths where we fill our corporate-logo imprinted conference tote bags with giveaway geegaws and doodads (“Oh, I’m just bringing these home for my kids. I am certainly not going to use this lab just because they gave me a glow in the dark double helix pen and a piece of chocolate. Even if it is a Dove dark chocolate.”).

You are deluding yourself if you think these drinks and trifles do not subtly affect your selection of  a lab to run your tests. Just about every research study on this topic has concluded that those not-so-freebies do influence healthcare providers. Besides, if those giveaways didn’t help a business’s bottom line, do you think they would waste money giving them away? And when we go home and take those tote bags to the grocery like responsible Green Citizens, we become walking billboards that announce to the world that NSGC and Lab X are awfully cozy with each other.

I am not saying that genetic counselors should be unconcerned about their institutions’ bottom lines, or that the NSGC should abandon relationships with corporate sponsors. I have no idea of the magnitude of the problem because it has not been systematically studied. It is almost impossible to study it ourselves; those of us in the middle of are likely to have a hard time seeing it. Somebody outside of our profession needs to study this.

What the profession can do for itself is to clearly define financial conflicts of interest and develop guidelines to help genetic counselors navigate the treacherous waters of the Great Sea of Conflicts of Interest.

Am I being overly worried? Are there other aspects of genetic counseling that are vulnerable to these concerns? Share your thoughts and comments and air out this dusty old closet that we have avoided opening.

18 Comments

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , , ,

by | November 14, 2010 · 9:47 PM

Demographics and The Future of Genetic Counseling

Those who do not study and prepare for the future are doomed to live it rather than to shape it. Keeping an eye on what might be coming down the road in the next 30 years could help genetic counselors play a key role in 21st century medical care. Let’s look at the some of

the demographic factors that got us here and then try to figure out where things might be headed.

Since about 1980, genetic counselors have been surfing a significant and unrelenting demographic wave – delayed childbearing. The AMA rate (the percentage of pregnancies to women 35 and above) increased virtually every year from 5% in 1980 to  nearly 15% in 2008; this pattern is even more pronounced in many Western European nations. We were in the right place at the right time. With apologies to the Beach Boys, we caught a wave and we were sittin’ on top of the world. Incidentally, I have noticed an ever so slight flattening of the AMA rate in the US over the last few years; I am not saying that it’s a close out yet or that we should grab the next ankle buster that rolls in, but we should be keeping our eyes open for a different demographic heavy.

The growing AMA rate profoundly influenced the genetic counseling job market and the very practice of genetic counseling. For example, the number of genetic counseling jobs increased with:

  • The number of women seeking prenatal diagnosis due primarily to their age.
  • The false positive rate of serum and ultrasound screening for fetal aneuploidy, with much higher false positive rates for women over 35, resulting in more referrals for genetic counseling.
  • The number of referrals for infertility, which increases with the age of the parents.
  • More referrals for genetic counseling for breast cancer. Although delayed child-bearing itself is not a hallmark of hereditary breast cancer, it can result in younger age at diagnosis and hence more likely to lead to genetic counseling.

The AMA rate also helped to shape the ethos and face of genetic counseling. The Holy Ethical Trinity of genetic counseling – autonomy, informed consent, and reproductive freedom – is worshiped by the largely liberal and progressive AMA population. Not surprisingly, the demographic profile of genetic counselors broadly reflects the patient population they serve, i.e., middle to upper middle class well-educated white women. We have more or less been the socioeconomic, physical, and ethical mirror images of our patients.

Trends, of course, have a habit of being temporary. The AMA rate will likely eventually decline as socio-economic factors change, reproductive preferences fluctuate , and political  moods swing. So what other demographic trends might influence the future of genetic counseling? Here are some population projections for the year 2050, based on a report from the Pew Research Center:

  • About 20% of Americans will be foreign-born, which will be greater than the percentage of foreign-born Americans during the great migrations from Europe a century ago. Currently, about 12% of the US population is foreign-born.
  • Non-Hispanic whites will make up less than 50% of the US population
  • The  percentage of the US population who are Latino or Asian will  increase to 29% and 13%, up from 14% and 5%, respectively (to say nothing of the increase in people of mixed ethnicity).
  • The percentage of the US population 65 and older will increase from 12% to 19%

What might this mean for the practice and profession of genetic counseling profession? For simplicity’s sake, I am ignoring other factors that can influence the future of the profession, such as advances in medical technology, new health care delivery models, and changes in the economics of medical services.

First off, we must increase the ethnic diversity of the genetic counseling profession so that we – and our support staff – reflect the demographic make-up of our patients. This can  help overcome significant social and psychological barriers to medical services and improve the cultural awareness and sensitivity of the profession. Perhaps we can take a lesson from Canada, where immigrants already comprise 20% of the population. Secondly, the guiding ethical and counseling principles of the profession must evolve to be in tune with the many and varied beliefs of an ethically and ethnically diverse population.  Not every culture buys into the supremacy of individual autonomy, nondirectiveness, or other lofty ethical principles of Western medicine.

An aging population means that we will be seeing more patients who are physically and cognitively impaired. The traditional educational and counseling models utilized by genetic counselors may not be particularly effective for this segment of the population. Because it may not be so easy for older individuals to navigate to and around large urban medical centers we may need to increase our presence in alternative medical care settings. From a clinical standpoint, we will also need to be sensitive to new or unanticipated manifestations of genetic diseases.

Where do you see the genetic counseling profession in the next 10, 20, or 30 years? What demographic trends do you think are important? How can we best prepare ourselves? What did I miss? Where do you disagree with me?

3 Comments

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | October 27, 2009 · 8:45 PM

The Small Satori of Genetic Counseling

Let’s face it – lots of genetic counseling is repetitious. Most of us have subconsciously scripted our own version of a counseling session that we follow more rigidly than we like to admit, the inevitable outcome of seeing hundreds of fairly similar patients a year, year in and year out. On particularly busy days, you may even  lose track of where you were  in the session when a patient asks a tangential question or there is a knock on your door. It can be a slog, a Groundhog Day-like re-playing of the same film with only minor variations.

This repetition stems to some extent from the educational component of genetic counseling, the need to impart complicated biomedical information with the ultimate goal of helping patients making good decisions about their medical care and lives. We want to combine knowledge with emotional guidance so patients can gain wisdom and personal insight. Sometimes, though, as you watch dazed patients stumble out of your office, you start to wonder just how effective or helpful you have been.

On the other hand, there is a zen-like quality to constant repetition of the same act. By focusing strictly on the task at hand you master it through endless repetition. You eventually perform without thinking of the mechanics of performing, and achieve a state of mastery without thought .  Chop that wood, carry that water. Brush left, brush right, Karate Kid. This frees the mind, making it receptive to sudden, unanticipated moments of enlightenment – satori, in the language of Zen. With a free mind, you can subconsciously pick up cues from patients’ words, expressions, and postures, and suddenly, you see into the heart and soul of your patient – Wumen’s thunderclap out of a clear blue sky. Ah –  this cancer patient is angry because his mother walked out on the family when his father was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, not because I kept them waiting 15 minutes for the appointment. Look – all the worry left her face when I said she really did not need to have an amniocentesis; she just needed someone in authority to tell her that it was a good decision.

What we really want, though, is for our patients to also have these small satori,  those magical moments when their faces light up, their eyes open wide, and everything falls into place for them.  These are some of the most rewarding and exciting moments of genetic counseling. Yes, yes, of course – I must tell my sister about my BRCA results to make sure she does not get ovarian cancer. She’s my sister ; I love her even if we are always bickering. You know – I just realized I do not need to have an amniocentesis; for some crazy reason, I was going to do it for my friends.

Repetition is critical to our professional development. In quiet, not-quite-perceptible ways, it builds our confidence, enhances our ability to understand our patients on a deep level, and plows the soil for the seeds of personal growth. For the compassionate bodhisattvas among us – like Jon Weil, June Peters, Luba Djurdjinovic and a few others – thunderclaps are second nature. For the rest of us – well, it’s back to chopping wood and carrying water.

7 Comments

Filed under Robert Resta

Tagged as , , ,