Both physician and @entity1 play a role in the referral process for @entity5 . Access to such counseling is not optimal because some eligible @entity1 are not being reached by current referral practice. We aimed to identify factors associated with the initiator of referral. During a 7-month period, we recorded demographic characteristics like gender, personal and family history of @entity5 , ethnicity and eligibility for genetic testing for 406 consecutive counselees using a specially designed questionnaire. Counselees were seen in a university hospital or a community hospital (n   =   7) in the Netherlands. We also recorded educational level of each counselee, clinical setting and who initiated referral. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the counselees' general characteristics. We analysed the association between counselee characteristics and the initiator of referral by logistic regression. The majority of counselees seemed to have initiated referral themselves but were indeed eligible for genetic testing. In comparison to the general population in the Netherlands, the counselees had a higher level of education, and there were fewer immigrants, although a higher level of education was not found to be a facilitating factor for referral. The clinical setting where a counselee was seen was associated with initiator of referral, although this relationship was not straightforward. There is a complex interaction between clinical setting and initiator of referral, which warrants further research to elucidate the factors involved in this relationship. @entity1 seen in @entity5 do not reflect the general population in terms of educational level or ethnicity.

Who is being referred to XXXX ? Characteristics of counselees and their referral.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['Patients', 'patients', 'patient'] @entity5 :: ('MESH:D009369', 'Disease') :: ['cancer genetic counseling', 'cancer']
@entity5 :: (MESH:D009369,Disease) :: ['cancer genetic counseling']
