Disability training for genetic counseling students: The advocates' perspective.

The genetics and disability communities have had a complicated relationship that is rooted in the history of the eugenics movement. Disability scholars claim that in order for healthcare professionals to provide optimal services to disabled patients, disability education must be implemented into healthcare training programs. No studies have explored the perspectives of disability advocates regarding the implementation and use of disability training in genetic counseling. This exploratory study recruited 13 advocates with lived experience of disability and genetic counseling exposure to participate in a semi-structured interview to share their recommendations for disability education opportunities in genetic counseling training programs and their perceived benefits of increased student exposure to disability. All advocates received genetic counseling themselves and four advocates reported working with genetic counselors in the advocacy setting. Advocates recounted their experiences working with genetic counselors, identifying qualities they deemed critical for effective counseling. All the advocates expressed interest in participating in experiential opportunities, with few concerns noted. The most frequently discussed recommendations for disability training included inviting advocates to speak in classrooms, and having students shadow disabled individuals. Advocates noted barriers to consider when implementing such educational opportunities, such as accessibility issues. Potential benefits of implementing disability education for students included providing students with a broader scope of knowledge and a deeper understanding of disability and resources available to the disability community. This novel study found that advocates are interested in participating in genetic counseling education, with recommendations on preferred experiential learning. By increasing a genetic counseling student's exposure to a disability, they may develop a comprehensive understanding of life with a disability, which may improve genetic counseling services to those with newly diagnosed disabilities.

The evolution of genetic counseling graduate education in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic: In the eye of the storm.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the globe in the past year, demanding shifts in all aspects of life including health profession education. The New York City area was the first major United States epicenter and is home to four genetic counseling graduate programs. We set out to explore the multifaceted programmatic changes required from the four institutions in an early pandemic epicenter, providing the longest time horizon available for assessing the implications of this restructuring on graduate education in the profession. Using practitioner-based enquiry, our iterative reflections identified three phases of COVID-19 response within our programs from March through December 2020. The spring months were marked by significant upheaval and reactivity, with a focus on stabilizing our programs in an unstable environment that included a significant medical response required in our area. By summer, we were reinvesting time and energy into our programs and prioritizing best practices in online learning. Relative predictability returned in the fall with noticeable improvements in flexibility and proactive problem-solving within our new environment. We have begun to identify changes in both curricula and operations that are likely to become more permanent. Telehealth fieldwork, remote supervision, simulated cases with standardized clients, and virtual recruitment and admission events are some key examples. We explored early outcome measures, such as enrollment, retention, course evaluations, and student academic and fieldwork progress, all indicating little change from prior to the pandemic to date. Overall, we found our programs, and genetic counseling graduate education more broadly, to be much more resilient and flexible than we would ever have realized. The COVID-19 pandemic has awakened in us a desire to move ahead with reduced barriers to educational innovation.

Chromosomal Microarray Detection of Constitutional Copy Number Variation Using Saliva DNA.

Chromosomal microarray (CMA) testing to detect copy number aberrations among individuals with multiple congenital anomalies and/or developmental delay is typically performed on peripheral blood DNA. However, the use of saliva DNA may be preferred for some patients, which prompted our validation study using six saliva DNA samples with a range of bacterial content (approximately 3% to 21%) and 20 paired blood and saliva specimens on the Agilent Technologies, Illumina, and Affymetrix CMA platforms. Ten of the 20 paired specimens were previously determined to carry clinically significant copy number aberrations by clinical CMA testing on blood DNA (100 kb to 2.56 Mb; five deletions, eight duplications). Notably, the quality of saliva DNA (DNA Genotek) was equivalent to blood DNA regardless of bacterial content, as was CMA quality and single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping quality with all CMA platforms. The number of copy number variants and absence of heterozygosity regions detected by CMA were comparable between paired blood and saliva DNA and, more important, all 13 clinically significant copy number aberrations were detected in saliva DNA by all CMA platforms. These data confirm that the quality of saliva DNA is comparable to blood DNA regardless of bacterial content, including important CMA and single-nucleotide polymorphism quality metrics, and that saliva DNA is a reliable alternative for the detection of clinically significant copy number aberrations by clinical CMA testing.

ClinLabGeneticist: a tool for clinical management of genetic variants from whole exome sequencing in clinical genetic laboratories.

Routine clinical application of whole exome sequencing remains challenging due to difficulties in variant interpretation, large dataset management, and workflow integration. We describe a tool named ClinLabGeneticist to implement a workflow in clinical laboratories for management of variant assessment in genetic testing and disease diagnosis. We established an extensive variant annotation data source for the identification of pathogenic variants. A dashboard was deployed to aid a multi-step, hierarchical review process leading to final clinical decisions on genetic variant assessment. In addition, a central database was built to archive all of the genetic testing data, notes, and comments throughout the review process, variant validation data by Sanger sequencing as well as the final clinical reports for future reference. The entire workflow including data entry, distribution of work assignments, variant evaluation and review, selection of variants for validation, report generation, and communications between various personnel is integrated into a single data management platform. Three case studies are presented to illustrate the utility of ClinLabGeneticist. ClinLabGeneticist is freely available to academia at http://rongchenlab.org/software/clinlabgeneticist .