Moving Beyond a Diagnosis
Dita Obler, MS | Licensed and Board-Certified Genetic Counselor
Counseling
I work with families to maximize communication within the family as well as between families and providers, to prioritize quality of life, to build a toolkit for navigating change, challenge, and ambiguity, and to identify resources and support networks.
We will explore challenges, shifts in identity, family dynamics, your sense of hope and possibility, and your sense of meaning. I help families identify goals, personal strengths, needs, resources, comfortable communication, and coping styles and strategies. We will consider how previous experience both informs and guides a family as they move forward.
For Individuals and Families:
Medical Advocacy
I bridge gaps in care by helping to enhance your communication with your care team and can even accompany you to your doctor appointments.
I help you prepare and debrief from doctor visits, including gathering medical and family history information, clarifying priorities and family needs, and determining which provider can guide you on each priority and need. We learn what information to provide and what questions or concerns to raise, we enhance our medical language/literacy, and we prepare how to communicate and how to shift the focus to family concerns and priorities via tools and strategies.
Complex diagnoses require a personalized approach when building a team.
Together, we will carefully select providers who are committed to working as a family-centered team in developing a coordinated and evolving care plan and delivery schedule that fits your needs and values. I can assist families in identifying problem areas and potential solutions to avoid confusion and to improve buy-in for the care plan by both families and care providers.
Building a Care Team
I offer guidance on how to prepare for and navigate life altering experiences.
Nothing in life can prepare us for the devastating effects of a profound loss: the mind
numbing confusion, the emotional and cognitive suffering, and the sometimes unbearable sense of isolation. There is no road map as each loss brings its own unique features and layers. Together, we may explore health crises that challenge beliefs, identity, lifestyle, body image, or hopefulness.
If helpful, we will consider advantages and options for advance care planning, and when appropriate, end of life decision-making. We will focus on developing comfortable coping strategies and elucidating personal preferences for framing meaning when processing grief and loss.
Managing Grief, Loss, and Bereavement
For Group Practices:
Genetics In-Service
I provide busy primary care and sub-specialty practices with support and guidance regarding the genetic-related questions concerning their patient families. My goal is to assist practices with delivering the highest quality of care in this rapidly evolving era of information, options, and opportunities.
Services can include in-person consults, medical record review, disease-specific scientific reviews, individual and family supports, and access to clinical practice guidelines, to patient education materials, and to current testing options and clinical trials.
I can help busy clinicians critically analyze and interpret current information and research for diagnoses with known or suspected genetic etiologies, recognized familial or heritable patterns, complex clinical presentations, and/or disease-specific treatment strategies.
Coordinated Care Consultation
Many patient families require intensive coordination of their complex and/or chronic disease. Family dynamics may become entangled or overwhelming, sometimes interfering with time sensitive medical and legal decision-making.
I can assist in building a collaborative care team and facilitate development and implementation of an evolving coordinated care plan. I am available to join family and/or team meetings to provide insight into genetic, familial, and inherited processes and the potential impact on family experience and dynamics.
Busy practices often find that subsets of their patients share complicated experiences and challenges and wonder about the potential benefits of a group care model.
Together, we can assess your practice and patient population needs and goals to explore potential group care approaches. Our goal would be to streamline resource sharing and enhance and maximize patient and provider experience. I am available to build a group care team and to facilitate a group process.
Focus and support group facilitation
Many practices are interested in developing or enhancing care
delivery. This may involve identifying your organization's needs and vision, developing new projects or programs, and developing educational tools and a website, among other needs.
If problem areas are not already identified, I can facilitate focused team brainstorm session(s) or conduct a clinical observation/assessment to pinpoint areas as opportunities for growth or enhancement. We can develop your practice's psycho-educational materials targeted to help clients with adherence practices, clinical communication and management, and personal/family goal setting.
Organizational Consultation