Off the Charts

UK National DNA Infographic/ by blprnt_van, via Flickr Creative Commons

By Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, editor-in-chief emeritus. Mason often writes for this blog about policy and research issues.

Last week, I attended the annual conference of CANS, the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science, the “research-facilitation arm” of the American Academy of Nursing. The title of the conference was “Technology, Genetics and Beyond: Research Methodologies of the Future.” 

‘Genomics’ vs. ‘genetics.’ I’m not a genomics researcher but I found the sessions enlightening in two ways. First, I admit to struggling with the terminology (and jargon) of the field. I was reminded today that the correct term for the field is “genomics,” since “genetics” refers to the study of single genes and thus limits the focus of study mostly to rare diseases.  Genomics looks at associations among genes in the whole person—a shift in perspective that was enabled by the mapping of the human genome.

Targeted interventions. The second enlightenment came from keynote speaker and senior nurse researcher Christine Miaskowski, a dean and a professor of physiological nursing at the University of California at San Francisco School of Nursing. She noted that this shift to a focus on the whole person is what makes nurses and nursing research essential to the field.  She gave an example from her own research looking at fatigue among people with cancer. When all patients are grouped together, it looks as if there is little variation across time. But when you diagram each patient’s changes in levels of fatigue, there is actually huge variation. By looking at the genetic composition of individual patients, she’s been able  to determine who might respond best to a specific intervention that appears to have no effect when all patients are considered together. Such close examination of patient characteristics can help nurses and other health care providers to better tailor their interventions for the individual patient.

Ethical issues in research. That said, Suzanne Feetham, a nurse who has been a leader in advancing health care professionals’ understanding of genetics and genomics, talked about the ethical issues involved in conducting such research. Read the rest of this entry ?