Celebrating Our Medical Genetics Team
It is Medical Genetics Awareness Week this week (March 17-21), created to recognize the team of professionals who dedicate their careers to advancing the use of genetics and genomics in patient care and to share these careers with future genetics professionals.
Genome Medical is proud to have three groups of medical genetics professionals in our workforce: clinical geneticists, genetic counselors and our care coordinators, who work as genetic counseling assistants. Each plays a critical role when it comes to ensuring that our patients get high-quality and individualized care delivered through the convenience of telemedicine.
Genome Medical is one of the only telemedicine practices to have multiple clinical geneticists on staff, including our Chief Medical Officer, Steven Bleyl, MD, and our Pediatric Service Lead, Alan Rope, MD. Dr. Bleyl and Dr. Rope are medical doctors who have extensive training in evaluating, diagnosing and treating individuals who have inherited conditions, bringing the scientific advances of genetics and genomics into the clinic.
If you are interested in becoming a clinical geneticist, check out
- Graduate Medical Education in Medical Genetics and Genomics, a brochure from the American College of Medical Genetics & Genomics that describes how clinical geneticists are trained and what their work environments are like.
- The American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics for details on training and certification of clinical geneticists.
Genome Medical also has a team of more than 30 genetic counselors. Genetic counselors are health care providers who use their advanced training in medical genetics and counseling to help patients and their families evaluate how their genetic makeup might impact their health. Genetic counseling is one of the most rapidly growing health care specialty professions with more than 5,000 genetic counselors certified by the American Board of Genetic Counselors. The genetic counseling profession has more than doubled in the last 10 years and is expected to grow another 75 percent in the next 10 years. U.S. News ranks genetic counseling as #2 in Best Healthcare Support Jobs and #25 in 100 Best Jobs overall! If you’re wondering if you might be a future genetic counselor, check out my blog post for more things to consider.
If you are interested in becoming a genetic counselor, there are many resources that you may find useful
- Check out NSGC’s website, AboutGeneticCounselors.com. There are great resources for future genetic counselors, including the Find A Genetic Counselor search tool. There is a specific option for student contact, so find someone in your area and connect!
- Read the NSGC’s Genetically Speaking blog. This is one of the many ways that NSGC shares information with the genetics community and the public. Check out Genome Medical genetic counselor Scott Weissman’s blog post as a start on the “Evolution of At-Home Genetic Testing”
- Follow us on Twitter! You can find me at @ERamosSD and Genome Medical at @GenomeMed. You can also easily connect with many other genetic counselors as we typically use #GCchat or #IAmAGeneticCounselor to tag our tweets.
- Listen to the DNA Today podcast hosted by genetic counseling student Kira Dineen (Sarah Lawrence Genetic Counseling Class of 2020). Kira has more than 100 episodes for you to learn from. She has interviewed many genetic counselors and other experts in genomics from around the world about their experiences and work.
- Dive deeper into the process of becoming a genetic counselor. Genetic counseling student Nicole has shared her experiences preparing for a genetic counseling program and insights from her first year as a genetic counseling student on her blog.
Genome Medical would like to thank all of our medical genetics professionals for all you do to advance our vision of bringing genomic medicine to everyday care. And to all of you future geneticists, genetic counselors and genetic counseling assistants, we look forward to welcoming you to this incredible field!
Interested in joining our fast growing team of genetic experts? Explore our open positions
