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A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England

BACKGROUND: As advances in genetics are becoming increasingly relevant to mainstream healthcare, a major challenge is to ensure that these are integrated appropriately into mainstream medical services. In 2003, the Department of Health for England announced the availability of start-up funding for t...

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Autores principales: Bennett, Catherine L, Burke, Sarah E, Burton, Hilary, Farndon, Peter A
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2887834/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20470377
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-10-125
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author Bennett, Catherine L
Burke, Sarah E
Burton, Hilary
Farndon, Peter A
author_facet Bennett, Catherine L
Burke, Sarah E
Burton, Hilary
Farndon, Peter A
author_sort Bennett, Catherine L
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: As advances in genetics are becoming increasingly relevant to mainstream healthcare, a major challenge is to ensure that these are integrated appropriately into mainstream medical services. In 2003, the Department of Health for England announced the availability of start-up funding for ten 'Mainstreaming Genetics' pilot services to develop models to achieve this. METHODS: Multiple methods were used to explore the pilots' experiences of incorporating genetics which might inform the development of new services in the future. A workshop with project staff, an email questionnaire, interviews and a thematic analysis of pilot final reports were carried out. RESULTS: Seven themes relating to the integration of genetics into mainstream medical services were identified: planning services to incorporate genetics; the involvement of genetics departments; the establishment of roles incorporating genetic activities; identifying and involving stakeholders; the challenges of working across specialty boundaries; working with multiple healthcare organisations; and the importance of cultural awareness of genetic conditions. Pilots found that the planning phase often included the need to raise awareness of genetic conditions and services and that early consideration of organisational issues such as clinic location was essential. The formal involvement of genetics departments was crucial to success; benefits included provision of clinical and educational support for staff in new roles. Recruitment and retention for new roles outside usual career pathways sometimes proved difficult. Differences in specialties' working practices and working with multiple healthcare organisations also brought challenges such as the 'genetic approach' of working with families, incompatible record systems and different approaches to health professionals' autonomous practice. 'Practice points' have been collated into a Toolkit which includes resources from the pilots, including job descriptions and clinical tools. These can be customised for reuse by other services. CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare services need to translate advances in genetics into benefits for patients. Consideration of the issues presented here when incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services will help ensure that new service developments build on the body of experience gained by the pilots, to provide high quality services for patients with or at risk of genetic conditions.
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spelling pubmed-28878342010-06-19 A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England Bennett, Catherine L Burke, Sarah E Burton, Hilary Farndon, Peter A BMC Health Serv Res Research article BACKGROUND: As advances in genetics are becoming increasingly relevant to mainstream healthcare, a major challenge is to ensure that these are integrated appropriately into mainstream medical services. In 2003, the Department of Health for England announced the availability of start-up funding for ten 'Mainstreaming Genetics' pilot services to develop models to achieve this. METHODS: Multiple methods were used to explore the pilots' experiences of incorporating genetics which might inform the development of new services in the future. A workshop with project staff, an email questionnaire, interviews and a thematic analysis of pilot final reports were carried out. RESULTS: Seven themes relating to the integration of genetics into mainstream medical services were identified: planning services to incorporate genetics; the involvement of genetics departments; the establishment of roles incorporating genetic activities; identifying and involving stakeholders; the challenges of working across specialty boundaries; working with multiple healthcare organisations; and the importance of cultural awareness of genetic conditions. Pilots found that the planning phase often included the need to raise awareness of genetic conditions and services and that early consideration of organisational issues such as clinic location was essential. The formal involvement of genetics departments was crucial to success; benefits included provision of clinical and educational support for staff in new roles. Recruitment and retention for new roles outside usual career pathways sometimes proved difficult. Differences in specialties' working practices and working with multiple healthcare organisations also brought challenges such as the 'genetic approach' of working with families, incompatible record systems and different approaches to health professionals' autonomous practice. 'Practice points' have been collated into a Toolkit which includes resources from the pilots, including job descriptions and clinical tools. These can be customised for reuse by other services. CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare services need to translate advances in genetics into benefits for patients. Consideration of the issues presented here when incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services will help ensure that new service developments build on the body of experience gained by the pilots, to provide high quality services for patients with or at risk of genetic conditions. BioMed Central 2010-05-14 /pmc/articles/PMC2887834/ /pubmed/20470377 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-10-125 Text en Copyright ©2010 Bennett et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research article
Bennett, Catherine L
Burke, Sarah E
Burton, Hilary
Farndon, Peter A
A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England
title A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England
title_full A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England
title_fullStr A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England
title_full_unstemmed A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England
title_short A toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: Learning from service development pilots in England
title_sort toolkit for incorporating genetics into mainstream medical services: learning from service development pilots in england
topic Research article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2887834/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20470377
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-10-125
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