Interventions designed to influence lifestyle or preventive aspects of care may meet with resistance. Health promotion requires an investment by the individual and society in the decision that indeed preventive care is valuable. She furthers details that inadequacies of current technology impact already difficult decisions about prenatal genetic screening. Tailored therapeutics or surveillance activities such as frequent screening tests require testing specificity and sensitivity capability. Quality control and technology currently limit this capability.
Family relationships are dynamic and evolving.
Reproductive decisions may be impacted by genetic test results. Each of the OJIN articles present issues for consideration by the nurse in thinking about implications of genetics information for personal and family decisions. Genetic technology is offering new tools that have the potential for application throughout the human continuum. Health care decisions regarding the embryo, fetus, child, adolescent, adult, and the elderly will eventually all be impacted by genetic information. Only a small percentage of diseases are felt to have a hereditary component.