Medical and graduate students' attitudes toward personal genomics

Abstract

Purpose: Medical schools are being approached by direct-to-consumer genotyping companies about genotyping faculty or trainees as a method to "teach" them about the potential implications of genotyping. In thinking about the future incorporation of genotyping into a graduate level genetics course, the purpose of this study was 2-fold: first, to assess knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of students toward personal genomics as it related to themselves as both as customers and future physicians and as it related to consumers at large, and second, to determine the impact of the course (as taught without genotyping) on knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs. Methods: We surveyed first-year medical students and graduate students before and after a core genetics course. Results: After the course, students were less likely to believe that genotyping information would be useful to physicians, patients, or consumers; genotyping would provide information to improve their own personal health; or personal genomic testing services are diagnostic of medical conditions. They were more likely to answer knowledge questions accurately after the course but still had difficulty with clinical interpretation. Despite these changes, a slight majority of students were, and remained, interested in undergoing genotyping themselves. Of note, the number who believed genotyping "would help them understand genetic concepts better than someone else's data" decreased. General curiosity was the most commonly chosen reason for interest in undergoing genotyping, and approximately 50% of respondents expressed concern about confidentiality of results. Conclusions: In conclusion, even without the genotyping process, an educational program about genotyping increased knowledge, particularly about the clinical limitations of genotyping, but student interest in genotyping did not significantly change. Institutions thinking about offering genotyping to their students as part of a learning experience should consider the pros and cons of doing so. Genet Med 2011:13(5):400 -408.

How do students react to analyzing their own genomes in a whole-genome sequencing course?: outcomes of a longitudinal cohort study

“…Questionnaires included a measure of technical WGS knowledge developed for this study, previously published measures of personal direct-to-consumer genomic testing knowledge, attitudes toward and the perceived usefulness of WGS, 21 , decision regret (Decision Regret Scale), 25 and satisfaction with decision.…”

“…Questionnaires included a measure of technical WGS knowledge developed for this study, previously published measures of personal direct-to-consumer genomic testing knowledge, attitudes toward and the perceived usefulness of WGS, 21 selfreported understanding of WGS and types of personal WGS results received, and valid, reliable measures of depression (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale), 22 anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), 23 the psychological impact of personal genomic information (Multidimensional Impact of Cancer Risk Assessment (MICRA)) 24 , decision regret (Decision Regret Scale), 25 and satisfaction with decision. 26 We analyzed and reported the quantitative questionnaire data using frequencies, means and SDs, paired samples t tests for normally distributed data, Wilcoxon signed rank tests for non-normally distributed data, and repeated measures analyses of variance with Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons.…”

Promoting healthy dietary behaviour through personalised nutrition: technology push or technology pull?

“…Unsurprisingly, therefore, those with a family history of inherited conditions have been found to have more favourable attitudes towards genetic testing (21,55,67) and may be willing to pay more (56) . A sizeable proportion would avail of genetic testing for no reason other than curiosity (42,49,50,61,62,68) . Others, on the other hand, may not want to know test results unless treatment was available (53,54) .…”

“…Others, on the other hand, may not want to know test results unless treatment was available (53,54) . Despite generally positive attitudes towards genetic testing, and in keeping with existing qualitative studies into genetic testing (see previous paragraph), quantitative research, mainly surveys conducted over the last couple of decades conducted in the USA (8,37,(68)(69)(70)(71) , Canada (48,56) , Australia (72) , Europe (73) , the UK (59) , Finland (74,75) and the Netherlands (76) also indicate considerable concern among the public about internet privacy, data security, data use and data destiny (41,43,44,(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56) . Previous surveys into public attitudes towards genomics (52,53,55,67) , however, have failed to recruit samples that have been representative of the general population, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions as to the response of various societal groups to this emerging technology.…”

The Disclosure of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing: Sounding Out the Psychological Perspective of Consumers

“…People are more worried about privacy and discrimination problems in the USA and northern Europe [38][39][40], whereas they are more concerned about the influence such tests may have on future plans and on their reliability in southern Europe [37,41,42]. Younger people have a higher level of interest in genetic testing and DTCGT, along with a higher attitude towards new health technologies in general [43].…”