Advancing the Genetic Counseling Profession: Updates From ABGC Committees

ABGC's committees have been hard at work advancing our specialty over the last few months. Hear from committee leadership about their recent accomplishments and what to look forward to soon.

Certification Exam Committee

Amy Shikany, MS, CGC, Chair, and Katherine Dunn, MS, CGC, Vice-Chair

In January, the committee met to review the 80+ items that were written for the upcoming August 2024 and February 2025 exam forms. This is an important part of the exam development process that occurs every year as new items are assigned to fill gaps in content areas of need. The CEC reviews every item that was submitted by the item writers and validates the content, composition, structure and alignment with the CGC content outline; not all items that are written are approved. The edits to this year’s items aimed to ensure we are testing the competency mapped to the content outline and are written to be as inclusive as possible. Over the past several years, a thorough review of all exam items was done through the lens of DEIJ with the goal of creating a more equitable exam for all candidates. New questions are scrutinized around their use of ethnicity, sexuality and gender identity and relationship status.

In May 2024, the committee met to finalize the exam form. Through this process, the committee, along with the assistance of Prometric, conducted a comprehensive review of each item that has been selected. This review ensures that each item has the appropriate statistics to validate the exam. In addition to finalizing the exam, the CEC is reviewing the current list of references that are used to author the CGC exam items. Committee leadership is working towards providing a condensed list of references to allow candidates and item writers to focus on sources that not only support genetic counseling practice, but are the most important, relevant and widely accessible.

Practice Exam Committee

In December, the committee met to map the current items to the new content outline, which was created in August in response to ABGC’s 2022 practice analysis, a process conducted to identify current knowledge areas and tasks performed in the genetic counseling practice. ABGC conducts a practice analysis every five years, previously conducted in 2017. The item writers, who were selected through the 2023 Call for Item Writers, were given assignments based on the domains that were identified from the mapping exercise. The practice exam reviewers then reconvened in March to review and approve the new items for the 2024/2025 version of the CGC practice exam, which launched on June 1, 2024, and thanks to the work of this committee provides over 30 new questions.

Some changes that candidates will experience with the new practice exam include:

• Delivered in the same platform that the CGC certification exam is delivered.
• Provides 100 questions, and candidates will be allowed 120 minutes to complete the exam, which aligns to exactly half of the questions and time allotted for the CGC certification exam.
• Candidates will receive a report detailing the performance by subdomain after completion.
• After completing the practice exam, candidates will have the opportunity to review any questions that they got wrong.

Continuing Competence Committee

Sharon Aufox, MS, CGC, Co-Chair, and Claire Davis, MS, CGC, Co-Chair

As a quick reminder, in June of 2023, ABGC provided a brief look into the work that the Continuing Competence Committee (CCC) has been developing over the last few years. The CCC goal is to ensure that continuing competency for GCs meet industry standards. Most genetic counselors would agree that they have learned a lot through their careers and are looking for additional opportunities to expand their knowledge outside of their current specialty. The new learning activities that will be built into ABGC’s recertification program will do just that. The learning activities have been developed over the last year.

Most recently, the committee released a call for expert panelists to help provide rationale to support the new learning activities that aim to explore how a certified genetic counselor makes judgments in situations where someone might consider tricky or unstandardized, where we expect there is no one right approach. The committee selected 13 panelists to help with this effort. The CCC is summarizing the rationale that was provided by panelists and are currently developing literature reviews that will be incorporated into this new learning activity. More information about the launch of this new program will be shared with the ABGC Diplomates in the coming months.

DEIJ Committee

Enrique Lopez, MS, LCGC, Chair, and Josie Baker, MS, CGC, Co-Chair

Since the DEIJ’s last update in the fall, the glossary of terms subgroup has accomplished creating a DEIJ Glossary, which serves as a basic framework of terminology and examples to promote discussions surrounding DEIJ topics for ABGC, ABGC committees, Diplomates and candidates. As one example, the DEIJ Glossary provides an overview of “ability diversity” terms, such as ableism — a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with disabilities with the assumption people with disabilities need to be “fixed.”

The glossary will continue to be updated over time to reflect the expansion and understanding of DEIJ. The committee is working to share the DEIJ Glossary with partner organizations, such as NSGC,
GCEA and ACGC, and can be used by all stakeholders for their DEIJ needs as well — accessible on our website. With this document published, the committee is now charged with developing a proposal for a new certification scholarship program that will provide financial assistance to candidates. While this is still being developed by the committee, more updates will be shared as they are available.