Genetic counseling – the counselor’s perspective

Genetic counseling encompasses providing the patient/family with information essential for making an informed decision. How does one evaluate the efficacy of counseling? Genetic counseling should be non directive in that counselors should not impose their values or decisions on the patients and families they counsel. Therefore in evaluating a counseling situation, it would not be appropriate to assume a certain outcome and then determine if that is what is achieved. One method of determining the success of counseling would be to evaluate how much the patient/family understood and retained the information provided during the counseling session. Many factors could influence the patients understanding of the information provided. One of them is the educational background. Another important factor is the emotional status of the patient at the time they are provided with the information, which in turn would depend on the clinical situation they are involved in. Yet another factor would be the social and cultural background of the patient/family. These important factors have to be controlled for when studying the efficacy of genetic counseling.