Amanda Pichini, Jonathan Roberts and Emma Walters: How can Genetic Counsellors improve care through research?

Behind the Genes

Genetic Counsellors play an important part in healthcare and research. This Genetic Counsellor Awareness Day we focus on the role genetic counsellors have in research, to help improve care for patients and families.

On this episode of the G Word, Amanda Pichini, Clinical Lead for Genetic Counselling at Genomics England, is joined by Emma Walters, member of the Participant Panel at Genomics England, and Jonathan Roberts, NHS Genetic Counsellor and Clinical Content Developer at Genomics England. Emma shares her personal story and our guests delve into the impact of not having access to genetic counselling. They explore how research priorities can be defined by bringing together both the genetic counsellors and what they're doing in their healthcare roles and the patients themselves and their experiences together.

Johnathan will also be talking to genetic counsellors throughout this episode from the recent World Congress on Genetic Counselling.

You can read the transcript here: Genetic-Counsellor-Awareness-Day.docx

"I think another way in which research can really push that agenda forward is understanding who isn't accessing that [genetic] counselling. So when people get through the door and they experience genetic counselling, often that can be really valuable and they can suddenly start to make sense of all this testing, this family history. They can have a chance to talk about how they feel about it."

With special thanks and acknowledgements to World Congress on Genetic Counselling and Wellcome Connecting Science for their contribution to this podcast including Genetic Counsellors, Manisha Chauhan, Alison McEwen, Jared Warde-Jospeh, Nour Chanouha, Jehannine Austin and Kennedy Borle.