Genetic and genomic knowledge is a vital part of being a good nurse and meeting all of the competencies that are required to care for patients. There are a large number of genetic diseases, for example, and the field is extremely fast-paced. This makes keeping up-to-date with the information available important but challenging. It was an interesting process learning about all of the various elements of genetic information and how it can be used in nursing as well as generally assisting all health care professionals. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the information that I learnt with reference to the Genetic and Genomic Self-Assessment, as well as highlighting how it made me gain personal knowledge of the topic that I will use in my future career.
I learned that
During this course, I learned a huge amount of information, some of which caught my attention more than other pieces. I was particularly interested in learning about Down Syndrome, which was important to me as I know some family friends who have children with the disorder. I learned about trisomy through my investigations of Down Syndrome, particularly trisomy 21. I was particularly interested to find out that there are other forms of trisomy that can cause genetic disorders that are less common and less well-known. These include trisomy 18 (also known as Edwards syndrome) and Trisomy 13 (also known as Patau syndrome). These are not hereditary, but are still genetic, an important distinction to make and one that I was not really aware of before taking part in this course at nursing school. Overall, the course increased my knowledge of how different genetic and genomic information translates into physiological problems.
I learned this through.
Obviously I learned a lot of information through attending classes, which were well-created and had data that I could use later in my career. I also learned a lot of information by investigating some of the disorders on my own, as obviously it is difficult to cover every genetic disease in large amounts of detail in the class. I think it is a good approach to take something that interests you in terms of health care and then expand on your knowledge on your own, as this is what you do in the nursing profession (Blais, 2015, p.36). I am happy learning about things on my own because you can take your time and look into the bits that interest you most. I also learned a lot by taking the information that I had found and referring back to patients that I have worked with in the past. This type of retrospective is useful for learning.
This learning matters because.
It is important to have a wide range of knowledge that can be used in the nursing profession. In this career, you meet a lot of people and each of these have different needs. Genetic information is applicable to a wide number of patients in a large number of fields, as there are complications of many of these. If I was a cardiovascular nurse, for example, information about Down syndrome would still be important as these individuals often have heart problems. This type of crossover information makes genetic knowledge some of the most important to have and some of the most widely applicable. It is also important because having genetic knowledge is interesting in itself and gives insight into what area of nursing I might want to go into in the future. It allows me to make choices about what I want from my career.
References
Blais, K. (2015). Professional nursing practice: Concepts and perspectives. Pp. 36-42. 1st edition. Pearson:New York.
