Genetic testing is like doing a vital sign on a patient

November 3, 2023

Michele Long, Nurse Practitioner

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It’s very important in primary care to treat the patient as a whole because, you know, if they’re having high blood pressure, is that blood pressure related to a patient’s anxiety or depression?

Mental health and everything else is the whole patient. We’re treating every part of their body.

I believe bridging the communication with patients is asking the right questions.

Doing the depression and anxiety screenings.

If you see that they’re kind of off that day, ask what’s going on, ask how they’re sleeping. Have they lost weight Have they gained weight since their last appointment?

Just trying to look at the whole patient, to find out what’s going on with them. The next steps for me after diagnosis is finding out what medications they’ve been on in the past. I typically will use GeneSight because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it so we can get the patient feeling better sooner. The GeneSight test helps me come up with a an effective treatment plan.

Genetic testing is almost like doing a vital sign on a patient or checking their cholesterol levels. It’s looking specifically at the patient’s makeup and what they have going on inside them. It’s not something that they can change. You can’t change genetics. This test narrows those medications down to the patient’s specific DNA makeup.

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