Educational Issues and Strategies for Genomic Medicine: For the Public and for Providers

We have structured this chapter to first consider important and relevant issues related to public education and then to focus on provider-specific approaches to personalized medicine education. Any healthcare provider who has been in an encounter and has had the experience of the patient contributing information to the discussion that they pull from their smartphone, or of using face time to bring a friend or family member into a management discussion, knows that in this 21st century we are seeing changes to every aspect of the provider-patient interaction. As we think about the educational strategies that will be most useful in that interaction we need to recognize that all of us are members of the public first (even if we are providers), and that instead of a classic one-sided relationship where providers convey their knowledge to patients, a model that is needed is one where the provider's relationship with the patient is one of mutual collaboration. The application of new genomic as well as other knowledge to personalized medicine is particularly suited to a patient-provider model of collaboration.