Facilitating the Genetic Counseling Process Practice-Based Skills, Second Edition

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• Case #2: A couple brings their 2-year-old son to clinic. He is delayed in many of
  his milestones, and he is small and has some dysmorphic features. The geneticist
  suspects a syndrome and has ordered genetic testing.


• Case #3: A 49-year-old man comes to clinic in response to a referral from his
  primary care doctor. His father, paternal grandmother, and now recently a brother
  have all had pancreatic cancer. His father and grandmother died of the disease at
  about 45 years of age. His brother was just diagnosed at 42.
  Students are asked to describe five goals for their session. The goals can either be
  those identified in the REM (see Table 2.1), or they can be other goals identified by
  the students. For each goal, they should identify one strategy and corresponding
  behavior that would support that goal. Lastly, students are asked to describe at least
  one desirable and measurable outcome for the session.

Example
For Case #1, one possible goal, strategy, behavior, and outcome could look like the
following:

Goal Patient understands the meaning of the ultrasound finding

Strategy Assess patient knowledge of situation

Behavior Ask patient to relate what she was told by her doctor

Outcome Patient asked relevant questions about management options

Estimated time: 20–30 min.

Process
Students share their responses with the class, and the class provides feedback to
each dyad.
Estimated time: 30 min.

Instructor Note

• An additional activity would be to ask students to seek out measures that would
  indicate the goals have been met. Some examples include measures of patient
  satisfaction, quality of life, decisional regret, etc.


• Another activity would be to have each dyad role-play the situation for 15 min
  while the class identifies the goals, strategies, and behaviors demonstrated in the
  role-play.

References

American Society of Human Genetics. Genetic counseling. Am J Hum Genet. 1975;27:240–2.
Corey G. Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy. 5th ed. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/
Cole; 1996.
Eunpu DL.  Systemically based psychotherapeutic techniques in genetic counseling. J Genet
Couns. 1997;6:1–20.

2 Overview offiGenetic Counseling