Intro
We’ve all felt this, to the point where I hesitate to say it out of fear of sounding trite. But, 2020 has been a year like no other we’ve known in recent memory; tumultuous in so many ways. As the Clinical & Continuing Education (CCEP) team at JAX, we’d like to share our 2020 journey to highlight some new and updated resources that may be useful to you.
In-person learning
Just typing the words, “in-person” feels anachronistic. It seems like the in-person, interactive collaborations we enjoy so much are from a totally different era. We started off the year with Cancer: Does it run in the family?Helping clinicians take better family histories improves patient cancer risk assessments.grand rounds for oncologists at Mount Desert Island Hospital in Maine. Kate Reed, Director of CCEP, helped participants develop their hereditary cancer risk assessment skills. We were glad to collaborate with such wonderful clinicians and trainees, especially as they were the last group we’ll have face-to-face contact with for a while.
Remote - what we do best
For those of you who don’t know us that well, let me tell you that the CCEP team has been working together remotely for years. Judging from reports in the media, people are learning what we’ve discovered ourselves: teams can thrive when co-workers perform their work collaboratively and productively in an online work environment.
Educators recognized that the need to pivot to online learning in the spring was urgent. Therese Ingram, CCEP’s expert in instructional design, shared tips in this blog: Optimizing your courses for online deliveryMoving your classroom programs online changes the delivery method, but it doesn't change the desired learning outcomes. Optimizing your Courses for Online Learning .
Not only are more people working from home, clinicians are providing more telehealth services in the medical environment than ever before. We’re also finding that our audience of healthcare providers are shifting their continuing education to online resources. Two of our biggest genomic education programs, and Precision Medicine for Your PracticeHow can genetics be used in clinic with my patients? Can genetic information really improve outcomes? Genetic testing is constantly changing. How can I keep up?Precision Medicine for Your Practice , have seen threefold increases in online enrollments in the spring, compared to this time last year.
Through our blog posts and online modules, we’ve been able to expand our educational offerings in genomics. Emily Edelman reported on unintended consequences of using prenatal genetic testing for Using prenatal cell-free DNA screening to prepare for a gender reveal – what prenatal providers and expectant parents should knowThe American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends that both aneuploidy screening and diagnostic testing options be offered to all pregnant women. gender reveal parties in a blog post in January, before we saw another unintended consequence of the gender reveal party itself: igniting one of the destructive forest fires out West later in the year.
We’ve developed online resources for clinicians interested in learning more about exome and other genomic testing technologies, in settings such as pediatric neurology. Explore some of these resources:
- Talking Points about Exome Testing
- Comparing Genetic Tests
- Variant Classification and Reanalysis in Exome Testing
- Using RNA Sequencing and Other Technologies to Aid in Variant Interpretation
- Patient Management after Genomic Testing
Expanding our horizons
Now, we are reaching clinicians where they are. In the spring and again this fall, nurses participating in the The Maine Cancer Genomics InitiativeThe Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative (MCGI) is a special alliance of cancer experts, clinicians and researchers from The Jackson Laboratory who are focused on improving outcomes for cancer patients across Maine.Maine Cancer Genomic Initiative enjoyed interactive programming in somatic genomic tumor testing. They learned how to identify patients who might benefit from somatic testing, as well as how to read a report, match targeted treatments to genomic variants, and practice patient communication strategies. If you are interested in learning more, check out these Clinical Education through MCGICME and practical tools for the clinical application of cancer genomicsJAX somatic testing resources . Looking ahead to 2021, the MCGI forum will be going virtual and open to all.
We are also extending the reach of hereditary cancer counseling through education for oncology physicians and nurses in rural Maine. Through a Project ECHO® approach, monthly virtual sessions cover risk assessment, testing and management for BRCA carriers. We’ve covered expanded testing through gene panels, and will be addressing colorectal cancer syndromes such as Lynch syndrome, early next year.
Reset button – 2021
Linda Steinmark will continue to explore topics that impact genomics and healthcare. Keeping up with genomics in the real world, we’re trying to help our audience stay current in their understanding of the broad marketplace of consumer genomics. Look for our new Genomic Testing for the Healthy Individual online module in the Precision Medicine for Your PracticeHow can genetics be used in clinic with my patients? Can genetic information really improve outcomes? Genetic testing is constantly changing. How can I keep up?Precision Medicine for Your Practice program in mid-January!
I hope you find some things in our free offerings that interest you. Please reach out to us at ccep@jax.org or @JAX_ClinicalEd on Twitter. Wishing you good health and happiness in the new year!