Naomi: All right. So my name is Naomi Wagner
and I'm about to start my career as genetic counselor.
It is a group of health care professionals
with masters level training
who are specialists in both genetics and counseling.
So what that typically looks like is
more traditionally in a patient provider sort of role.
Talking to patients about their genetics,
and risk for genetic conditions.
But since we're specialists in genetics,
and in dealing with sensitive topics,
we can have roles in lots of different fields as well.
Not just one on one with patients,
but also in the research,
in the pharmaceutical field,
stuff like that as well.
So, genetics comes into play
at a lot of different stages in life.
We sort of separate it out based on stage of life.
So in the pre-natal world,
genetics would come into play during a pregnancy.
People can choose whether or not
they want to test their pregnancies
for conditions like down syndrome,
which could happen in any pregnancy
or also if they want to test
for conditions that are known to run in a family.
In the pediatric world, genetics comes into play
for many individuals with differences
either in learning or in physical features,
because we know that genetics plays a role
in the development of children.
So nowadays a lot of children
with developmental delay or autism
might undergo a full genetic evaluation.
In the adult space there can be
genes associated with cardiology conditions,
also cancer conditions
is sort of the main adult region
of genetics it's very popular right now
for people with cancer diagnoses
or cancer in the family
to try to figure out
if it's a cancer that happens sporadically
or due to environmental causes,
or if there is actually something in the family
that made them more at risk to get cancer
and therefore their relatives more at risk to get cancer.
In some settings we might see six patients a day for example
and we'd have some administrative time
in between appointments,
and then we'd see a patient
normally in an office setting
and sit with them and talk.
In a patient appointment,
some classic features of a genetic counseling session
would be checking in with the patients,
seeing what they know about the appointment.
Going through their family history
and medical information.
And we tend to take a family history pedigree
drawing out with squares and circle the family
and trying to find some patterns
to make sure there's nothing we're missing.
Because of advances in technology,
most cases we can offer some sort of
genetic testing to the patients.
So we have genetic test options
that we're normally offering during an appointment.
And if patients would like to proceed
we can normally do it that day
and then in a couple weeks
when the test results comes back
we'll be the ones to follow up with them
and talk about what those results are
and what they mean.
Genetics is really complicated information
so often we'll have an appointment
to meet again and discuss the genetic testing results too.