STP 2021 entry - (genomic counselling)

What locations did you put down, if you don't mind me asking? Good luck!

Hi all, this is a career path I've recently started to consider and I'm really interested in successful candidates' educational and employment backgrounds. I have a BSc in psychology (from 2011...!) and have since then been lucky to have worked in psychologically relevant jobs. I've worked as a support worker in various community settings, e.g. a mental health support service, service for families with children with a range of disabilities and a further education college for young people with learning disabilities. I have a PhD in psychology (nothing related to counselling or genetics - it was on child language development), and have worked as a clinical psychology researcher for the past 5 years. My postdoctoral research experience is primarily focused on developing family interventions for psychosis and perinatal & parenting psychology research. Some of the work I have been involved in were on developing interventions for parents of children with an illness or a disorder to help them cope better with the challenges that may bring to the family's life. This is one of the reasons why I have developed an interest in genetic counselling as a potential career path as the impact of an illness or a disorder, or the possibility of one, can be mentally very daunting and parents often feel there's a lack of support.

Does my background sound potentially feasible/suitable for the genomic counselling training? I understand I would need to do a genomics course to add to my CV but other than that, I'd like to know if my background seems potentially well fitting for the training or if it's too heavily psychological. Based on what I've found online so far, majority of genetic counsellors come from a biomedical background which makes me wonder about my suitability.

Any thoughts and insights would be welcome.

Hi!

I'm pretty sure that's a perfectly suitable background! The STP takes people from various backgrounds. As long as you do a genetics/genomics course before applying, I reckon you'd be fine!

Hey, glad to help!

It's never too late to start! I wouldn't write off the experience you currently have either, it's good and definitely relevant. The experience is important but what's more important is how you relate what you learnt from that experience; there are a lot of people with less experience than me who have been successful.

Hey, I'm a successful applicant from this year, happy to answer any questions.
I'll echo what most people have said here already; the future learn course around Counselling is a really good one to do, and the course is super competitive with most people taking multiple attempts to be successful.
I have very similar experience to yourself (graduated in 2014, 6 years care work, family member with a hereditary condition) so experience wise you're definitely in with a good shot.
From this year, the absolute most important thing seems to be how you write the application itself. If I were you I'd download the person specification on the NSHCS website now and familiarise yourself with it. They grade your application by going through the specification and ticking everything off; you need to hit every point to get an interview. A lot of people with great experience didn't get through this year because of this (but this year was all over the place anyway).
It's definitely worth applying and you've got some great experience! Let me know if there's anything else I can help with 🙂