The impact of genetics on medical education and training

This paper explores, mainly from the UK perspective, some of the issues rel ating to the current, and potential, impact of advances in genetics and mol ecular biology on the education and research training of healthcare profess ionals. We start by describing some of the expectations for progress in the use of genomic technologies and genetic data in healthcare delivery and th e need for policy development to ensure timely translation of advances in s cience and technology into improved patient care. We review briefly the lik ely evolution of clinical genetics service provision to build the requisite scientific basis in primary care and explore how user needs could be addre ssed. Strategic issues for the future medical curriculum are introduced and linked with the concerns about the current status of clinical academic res earch. The issues for research training, career progression, nurturing of r esearch 'at the bedside', definition of the research agenda and weaknesses in both academic infrastructure and support costs are reviewed in the conte xt of the urgent imperative for medicine to harness the accelerating pace o f progress in genomics.