Ways to Prepare for a Genetic Counseling Visit

From WikiGenetics

Come to the visit with a list of questions you would like to ask. This will help the counselor focus on your concerns. Genetic counseling visits usually involve collecting family history information. It can be useful to ask your relatives about what types of medical conditions run in your family before your visit. If you have medical records relating to your concerns, you may want to bring them or ask your doctor to send them to the genetic counselor before your visit.

[edit] What can you expect from your visit?

At the beginning of the session, you and the genetic counselor should agree on what to talk about in the session. Common topics include:

• Talking about your family health history and ethnic heritage
• Helping you understand the causes of genetic conditions
• Helping you understand a diagnosis or, in some cases, the reason why no diagnosis has been made
• Guiding you through decision making about genetic testing, family planning or medical planning
• Helping you deal with emotions associated with having a known genetic condition, having a relative with a genetic condition or being at risk for a genetic condition
• Finding supportive resources to help you manage a genetic condition
• Understanding the risk of passing a genetic condition on to your children

Your input is very important to your genetic counseling session.

[edit] Questions you might ask your genetic counselor

Here are some sample questions to help you come up with your own:

• Does the disease in question run in families?
• If my family member has a disease, might I get it?
• If I have a disease, are my family members at risk of getting it?
• Is any kind of genetic testing available? If so, what are the benefits and limitations of the testing?
• What kind of information can genetic testing give me?
• What’s involved in the genetic testing?
• If I decide to have genetic testing for myself or my child, when can I expect to hear back about the results? How will the results be given to me?
• How can knowing more about a genetic risk help me?
• Could I be exposing myself/family to discrimination based on genetic information?

[edit] Resources

For more information on how to organize your family health history and construct a personalized family health history report, follow these links:

Surgeon General’s Family Health Portrait Tool: [1]

Genetic Alliance's Family Health History Tool: [2]

For more general information about Family History: Family History