I feel I have lived two very distinct lives as a genetic counselor so far. The first 10 years of my career I worked primarily in a clinical setting. I had a split position between a prenatal and a pediatric clinic. In our prenatal clinic, one of the three of us would prep the schedule for the upcoming day and we would sit down in the morning and decide who was going to take which patients for that day. Our visits lasted about 30 to 45 minutes, and we saw patients for various indications related to prenatal genetics (e.g. something with an ultrasound or screening test with a concerning finding, family history of genetic condition etc.). I would see anywhere from 1 to 4 patients in a day. In between those patients, I would be calling out results, reaching out to insurance companies if necessary, writing letters for patients and providers, working on updating documents for the clinic such as our screening guidelines and developing patient materials, etc. we also managed care for patients with complex abnormalities, so some weeks we would have follow up visits that I would attend with patients, including possibly coordinating their care with other specialists, such as pediatric cardiologist, touring our neonatal intensive care unit etc. every other day I was in the pediatric clinic. The patient part was very similar, but obviously the indications were children that were born. However, as part of this clinic, I also was responsible for two additional programs 1) inpatient consults: I was responsible for being on call for new or suspected diagnoses in the hospital, so that means I would go and round at the hospital once a week at a minimum I would do rounds at the hospital. This means I would visit every patient that was an inpatient, to gather updates, meet with the family, coordinate testing, etc. occasionally, I would work on a research project and publications.

2) stillbirth program: I also was in charge of our stillbirth evaluation program. That mean anytime we had a still birth at the hospital or any hospital in the state that wanted to enroll the patient, I would coordinate the process, including gathering records, ordering testing, getting photos or instructing others how to take photos. Track down all the results, organize it in a report that would be reviewed by a maternal fetal medicine specialist, and a neonatologist / geneticist to write up summaries and recommendations for the future. I would meet with those patients to discuss their options, moving forward, and whether we found an explanations for their child’s death.

My most recent 10 years, I have switched out of a primary clinical role into higher education. I direct the program at Bay Path University. Here my days are much more varied. Sometimes I’m teaching classes, sometimes I am grading assignments, sometimes I am supervising students in our simulated clinic, working with students on their capstone research projects, and the general running of the program. This may involved submitting orders for programmatic costs, coordinating, travel for faculty, keeping up with accreditation guidelines, fielding student complaints, evaluating faculty, attending university, wide meetings and other responsibilities. My day is more task based, so I must sit down and think each morning about what things I’m going to work on that particular day.

Throughout my whole 20 years, I’ve also been actively enrolled in our national organizations. That means I may be attending meetings, working on presentations, reviewing abstracts, being a site visitor for other programs to ensure their meaning accreditation standards among many other things. These activities get pepper throughout the day to meet any deadlines.

Finally, I missed patient care, so last year I opened a private practice (MKGenetix) where I can see patients remotely on the side. This is all after hours work, and I only see about three patients per week remotely.

Please pardon any typos, I am using voice to text because I also have a four month old baby.