To celebrate the fifth annual Genetic Counselor Awareness Day on Nov. 4, we featured stories of genetic counselors from different backgrounds who embody the many facets of the profession and gave a glimpse into a day in their lives as genetic counselors. Learn more about their work and the many roles genetic counselors take on each day.
If you’re interested in becoming a genetic counselor, learn more here: https://bit.ly/3H6oaCG
“Hello! My name is Priscila and I am a genetic counselor at the University of Indiana. And so today, what I’m going to do is to show you more or less what my day is like as a remote genetic counselor. Well, I start my day off with a little coffee, but afterwards I want to show you a little bit of what I do, and some of the documentation I like to send my participants after a call, OK? I always like sending my participants information about Parkinson’s disease. So, I select a few documents from here to send them. All of them are in Spanish and they’re really excellent. And another thing I was doing was checking if there was any news about an article I sent to a Pan-American presenter on Parkinson’s disease. And I was also planning on working on this document and reviewing it for a student of mine. And that’s more or less it. I spend a big part of my reading a lot of emails, jumping on Zoom calls and preparing for various participants. And now I’m going to get ready for my next call. Well, it was a pleasure showing you what my day looks like. And I invite you to learn more about genetic counselors or genetic advisors. And we hope that this video is interesting for those who are interested in the profession.” – Priscila Delgado Hodges, MS, CGC
“I will start my day by checking emails. I just got an email that some test results are back. Uh, just had a panel come back with a bunch of variants of uncertain significance. I've got another result back for a kiddo that we did, family variant testing. Um, I have a few phone visits today, so I don't have to worry quite as much about what I look like. So I left a voicemail and now I wait. Patient called back! So, um, now I write a note. He was for a referral for bilateral hearing loss. So we're doing some testing for him. Afternoon, snack, apples, and peanut butter, usually it's candy, but today I'm being good. I cleaned up my background. So, it looks a little better cause I had a video call. My first patient is a kiddo from a children's hospital that we partner with, who has epilepsy, developed epilepsy at 10 years old. So we are meeting with his mom to discuss some testing options. So now we have our teams meeting and at this meeting we meet to discuss new partnerships and review cases. At this point, I've gotten sidetracked and I need to just come back to the note I was working on and finish it. Hi, this is Maria Renee genetic counselor with genome medical. Hi, nice to meet you. Can I, um, have you confirm her name and date of birth for me? We are having a student supervision meeting. Woo!” – Maria-Renee Coldagelli, MS, LCGC
“I'm a cancer genetic counselor at an academic medical center. Because of this, my days usually consist of some combination of tasks related to clinic, research and teaching. No matter what I'm working on, I get to collaborate with colleagues from both genetics and all types of other specialties. Though no two day are exactly the same, they are all fulfilling and exciting.” – Julia Cooper, MS, CGC
NSGC Headquarters promotes the professional interests of genetic counselors and provides a network for professional communications. Access to continuing education opportunities, professional resources, advocacy and the discussion of all issues relevant to human genetics and the genetic counseling profession are an integral part of belonging to the NSGC.