Counseling in a different language: An analysis of experiences and resources in multilingual genetic counseling.

ABSTRACT

This study set out to investigate the experiences of bilingual/multilingual genetic counselors in the United States and Canada who have counseled in a non-English language and characterize their training experiences to identify potential areas for improvement. A total of 32 bilingual and/or multilingual genetic counselors completed online surveys. Approximately 83% of participants typically counsel patients in languages for which they believe their proficiency is at least good without the participation of an interpreter. Challenges to providing language-concordant care include insufficient patient-facing translation tools/resources, with roughly half reporting they have created their own resources out of necessity. For training programs, there was a strong desire for more supervision in bilingual/multilingual genetic counseling students' non-English language during training to help foster genetics-related language skills development.