The Indiana State University Genetic Counseling Program: Filling the Gap

By: Trisha Neidlinger

I am a member of the inaugural genetic counseling class of 2018 at Indiana State University (ISU). Many of you may be wondering where Indiana State University is even located, Indianapolis? It would have to be in a large city for the students to get multiple exposures in clinical practice, right?  It is actually in Terre Haute, Indiana, a relatively small town with a population around 60,000. ISU has developed a program that allows us students to do the majority of our course work in the first year of the program on campus, and in the second year we will each be located somewhere in the United States doing our clinic rotations while taking online courses. While some programs offer the possibility for students to travel to a distant rotation in the summer months, some even internationally, the second year the majority of them tend to keep their students close.  Why then did ISU develop this program structure?

To most, it is no secret that the demand for genetic counselors is high and is projected to stay that way. However, there is a large gap in genetic counseling students graduating from programs and jobs that need filled. In other words, genetic counselors are not meeting that demand. The reality of it is, there are only 33 programs in the United States offering genetic counseling training, and the median for number of students a program is able to accept is 6, with the range of program sizes between 2 and 20 students (Pan, Yasher, Pothast, & Wicklund, 2016). You may be thinking, well maybe there just isn’t an interest for students to pursue genetic counseling or there are not many applicants who are qualified to be accepted. In a study done by Pan et al. (2016), they state there are more than 800 qualified applicants applying per year. If the demand is so high, and there are more qualified applicants than programs can accept, why aren’t programs expanding and new programs popping up?  Well, this is exactly what Pan et al. set out to discover. They were able to survey 25 out of the 30 genetic counseling program directors in 2011, and found that while they identified multiple barriers, the majority of directors (94%) thought clinical site quality, availability, and variability as well as appropriate supervisors at the sites was a key barrier (Pan et al., 2016).

 
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Hence, ISU has many eyes watching how this program’s structure will play out. Can you have a successful program, in a rural town, where all the students are required to travel and live in different areas of the United States to get the clinical practice they need? Personally, one of the main reasons I chose ISU was because of the distance rotations in the second year. I feel it is a tremendous opportunity to get exposure to the different specialties in different regions of the U.S. Not only is every health care system going to run things differently, but the beliefs and backgrounds of the people you counsel will differ based on the culture of the region in where they were brought up. At ISU, I could potentially do rotations in a different city in the U.S. every semester (summer, fall, and spring).  As with any new program, there are sure to be bumps in the road that will need to be worked out.  Overall, I am confident that the planning and dedication that has gone into developing this program will result in great success for my inaugural class and classes to come. Just think about it, if something isn’t done to fill the gap between genetic counseling graduates and workforce demand, others are going to have to try and take on genetic testing without having the appropriate training.

Work Cited:

Pan, V., Yashar, B. M., Pothast, R., & Wicklund, C. (2016). Expanding the genetic counseling workforce: Program directors’ views on increasing the size of genetic counseling graduate programs. Genetics in Medicine Genet Med, 18(8), 842-849. doi:10.1038/gim.2015.179