Myriad Women' Health, South San Francisco, California, USA.
Myriad Genetics, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
J Genet Couns. 2021 Oct;30(5):1316-1324. doi: 10.1002/jgc4.1500. Epub 2021 Aug 30.
The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges worldwide that required rapid adaptation and transformation across the entire healthcare system. Graduate medical training programs across all specialties have moved to rapidly adjust to the virtual landscape. This created a unique opportunity for genetic counselors who work in industry and within diagnostic laboratories to develop internship and rotation programs that can be offered virtually to meet the needs of genetic counseling training programs. Myriad Genetics, Inc., was contacted by numerous graduate programs in genetic counseling beginning in March 2020 requesting the opportunity for their students to participate in remote laboratory-based rotations. As a result of these requests, a working group of genetic counselors across Myriad came together to adapt existing experiences to fully remote formats and develop new remote-based opportunities for students. We describe our experience of expanding genetic counseling student rotations during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of providing examples of remote learning experiences that may be applicable to other diagnostic laboratory industry-based rotations for genetic counseling students. In 2020, a total of 59 second-year genetic counseling students, from 21 different genetic counseling training programs, participated in one of five different virtual experiences. Furthermore, two new rotation experiences were created to increase capacity and highlight diversity of industry roles. Genetic counselors in industry are uniquely positioned to provide both remote training opportunities for genetic counseling students and exposure to the variety of roles that genetic counselors can occupy. Increasing the exposure to these roles is important as the genetic counseling workforce continues to expand and diversify, and it is imperative among all programs to enable access to these opportunities.
COVID-19 大流行在全球范围内带来了前所未有的挑战，需要整个医疗保健系统迅速做出适应和变革。所有专业的研究生医学培训计划都已迅速调整为虚拟环境。这为在行业和诊断实验室工作的遗传咨询师提供了独特的机会，可以开发出虚拟实习和轮转计划，以满足遗传咨询培训计划的需求。Myriad Genetics, Inc. 从 2020 年 3 月开始收到许多遗传咨询研究生课程的联系，要求为学生提供远程实验室轮转的机会。由于这些请求，Myriad 的一组遗传咨询师共同努力，将现有经验改编为完全远程的形式，并为学生开发新的远程机会。我们描述了在 COVID-19 大流行期间扩大遗传咨询学生轮转的经验，目的是提供可能适用于其他诊断实验室行业轮转的远程学习经验示例，以满足遗传咨询学生的需求。2020 年，共有 59 名来自 21 个不同遗传咨询培训项目的二年级遗传咨询学生参加了五个不同的虚拟体验之一。此外，还创建了两个新的轮转体验，以增加容量并突出行业角色的多样性。行业中的遗传咨询师具有独特的优势，可以为遗传咨询学生提供远程培训机会，并让他们接触遗传咨询师可以担任的各种角色。增加对这些角色的了解非常重要，因为遗传咨询师的劳动力不断扩大和多样化，所有项目都必须能够提供这些机会。
