The future of cancer care is being tailored to match the distinct variations in the individual’s genomic blueprint with precision medicine ensuring a more targeted approach to cancer prevention and treatment. Mainstream genomic testing pathways are being incorporated into routine cancer care. Reviews of literature have shown that the knowledge of front-line healthcare professionals relating to genomics is often suboptimum and that knowledge can be improved with targeted educational programmes. The World Health Organisation and others have advocated for the importance of incorporating genomics content into both pre-registration and continuing education programmes for healthcare professionals.
The aim of the GENomics Enabled ONCology (GENE-ONC) Education programme and Network is to support the genomic education of current and future oncology health-care providers. It is proposed that this can be done by:
Co-designing cancer genomics units that can be integrated into undergraduate curricula.
Exploring innovative and active pedagogies that are effective in teaching genomic concepts.
Supporting faculty education to improve the integration of cancer genomics within undergraduate healthcare curricula.
Supporting the ongoing continuous professional development of healthcare professionals who act as clinically-based educators in relation to cancer genomics.
Making all materials and process descriptions open access.
Year one includes a baseline assessment of genomic curricular offerings and clinical educators and faculty genomics’ literacy; year two includes a co-design phase using serial World Cafés (n=3) to design cancer genomic curricula followed by implementation of the programme as a pilot with refinement of curricula and companion educator training informed by the pilot test results; year three includes pre-post-test evaluation across six higher education institutions.
The GENE-ONC Network, with representatives from US, Northern and Southern Ireland, Finland, and Wales, will take a tripartite approach in educating faculty, clinical assessors, and students within one overall interprofessional programme for medical, nursing and pharmacy pre-registration students and healthcare professionals.