Question

Practical scenario: You discover during medical intake that the client has a family history of genetic cancer. Will you advocate for your client to be genetically tested for their familial cancer(s)? Why or why not (think all encompassing topic issues: treatment at primary, secondary, or tertiary care; knowledge and stress of disease process; healthcare budgeting; ethics including if insurance companies having access to this information) Note: Every major hospital system has their own insurance company. Describe what tumor suppressor gene means for a client that possess that genetic trait in comparison to a patient that does not have this genetic trait?

Answer 1

Answer. The client should be advocated for genetic counselling. This is an important aspect for the person for whom there is probable family history of cancer. Genetic checkup would help the patient to know about the inheritance patterns. They will get the calculatory risks of recurrence of cancer.

As a health care professional, the knowledge regarding the treatment care plans should also be informed to the patient. If in case that patient shows positive symptoms for getting cancer, then the treatment plans should be taught. The primary care invloved the overall general care of the patient regarding education and his/her wellness. The secondary care plans include the start of treatment with medications and tests, etc. The tertiary care plans include more severe conditions that require specialized knowledge and more intensive health monitoring.

The patient needs to educate about the stress related issue while having treatment. Stress issues are more important as in providing negative effects. It affects the immune system of patient's body. So, dealing with chronic stress must be taught to the patient because decreased immune system will manifest the illness.

The patient should also be provided information about the cost or budget for the treatment of illness. The treatment methods, diagnostic test, medications, etc are comparatively expensive than those of other disease. So, the options of health insurance will full pros and cons of the policies should be discussed with patient and the family. The insurance company that is tied up with the specific hospital and its legal policies are the must provided informations.

All such informations should be given to the patient who has more probability of getting disease along with the actual meaning of disease. For example, if the patient is acquiring tumor inside his/her body, then he/she should know about exact detail of what is growing inside them. This information includes that the everyone has a tumor suppressor gene inside them, but when there is a probability of mutation in that gene, discovered after the calculations of genetic counselling, the patient is at high risk of getting cancer or tumors. So, the treatment should be started at the earliest.