Hi everyone, my name is Amelia Kirby and I am an associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. I am a clinical geneticist and I was asked to talk to you today about what a day in the life of a clinical geneticist is like. So unfortunately we are not able to do this in person so I am recording this but at the end if you have any questions feel free to reach out, I am more than happy to help. So a little bit of background about me, I decided to do a combined pediatrics and genetics residency and fellowship. At the time that I did mine it was a five year combined program, now it's a four year combined program but I felt that it was a great way for me to get to genetics a little bit faster and still get to be double board certified in pediatrics and medical genetics. So a day in the life, there are several different parts to my job, I kind of break it into three main parts. For me, one is outpatient clinic and in the clinic we see everything. So that's one of the things I really enjoy about my job is that we have quite a variety of different patients, different ages, different presentations. So for example, in clinic yesterday I saw a patient for evaluation for neurofibromatosis, I saw a child with dysmorphic features and developmental delays, and I saw a child with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. So it's really neat to be able to see so many different things all in one clinic. The next part of my job is inpatient consults and on our consult service we get to kind of lend our brains to whatever situation is going on. So we sometimes are called to the NICU when a baby is born with birth defects or other concerns, sometimes we're called to the PICU when they are concerned that someone might have an inborn error of metabolism, sometimes we are called to the adult unit when a patient has rhabdomyolysis or a rare tumor. So the consults are really interesting and very variable, sometimes they come very frequently, sometimes there's a little break in between, you never know. And then the third part of my job is more administrative time. So during that time I am working on my notes, I am returning phone calls and emails, I am interpreting genetic test results that we get back, because as you will learn, genetic test results are not always straightforward and sometimes there's a lot more research and interpretation that we need to do. So those are things that I do in my administrative time. And then I also have a big interest in teaching and so I spend a lot of my time working in that area as well. So there are some things that I really love about my job that I wanted to tell you about. First is the variety. So I think it is so cool that I can see someone from a fetus all the way up through a 90-year-old person and not only are the ages variable, but the disorders are as well. So I think it really keeps you on your toes and you're always learning about something new and different and I think it's very exciting to be in this field. Another thing I love about genetics is that we get to build really great long-term relationships with our families. So some families we follow from when they're pregnant with their child with a genetic disorder throughout their entire life. And since we're able to see both pediatrics patients and adults, we really don't ever have to kick them out so we can continue following them for as long as we would like. The other thing that I like, which is a plus and a minus, is that we have very long appointments. So I never feel rushed in clinic. I never have that sense of I need to get to the next patient. I'm worried that I'm not going to have enough time. And because of those long appointments, I feel like we get to build special relationships with our parents because they feel that we are taking the time to really understand them and their child and what's going on. There are a couple of things that I don't love about my job. First is that, as you probably know, our notes are very, very detailed and sometimes take forever to write. Second is that sometimes our job can be very sad. So there are some devastating genetic disorders and a fair number of our patients pass away or don't make it. And that can be really, really hard to deal with. I think that also lends itself to a positive that those times in a patient or a family's life are so scary and so hard that we really get to be there for our patients in a time of need that many other people do not get to experience. And I think that really is an important part of our job. I think generally that the positives very much outweigh the negatives when I think about my job. I absolutely love being the puzzle solver. I think it's so cool when we see this list of symptoms or a group of features and we get to put it all together and figure out what's going on and we have lots of different technology and ways to do that. And I think it is a very exciting field that is constantly changing. So that's just a little bit about a day in the life of a geneticist. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to me. And I hope that we have enticed some of our learners to join us in the field.

Amelia Kirby

clinical geneticist

outpatient clinic

inpatient consults

administrative tasks