Nicola Taverner

Dr Nicki Taverner is a Registered Genetic Counsellor, and has been working with individuals and families affected by genetic conditions since 2007, initially in the West Midlands and now within Wales. She has a particular interest in education, both for genetic counsellors and other healthcare professionals, and is Programme Director of the MSc Genetic and Genomic Counselling at Cardiff University, as well as Lead Assessor for the final year assessment of the Scientist Training Programme (Genomic Counselling) with the National School of Healthcare Science in England. She has previously served as Chair of the Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors (AGNC), and is part of the AGNC's Genetic Counsellor Education and Training Group, looking at training across the UK and Ireland.

Since 2023, she has been seconded to Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) as Clinical Lead for Genomics, where she led on developing the Strategic Genomics Workforce Plan for NHS Wales. This aims to right-size the specialist genomics workforce and ensure that the wider workforce has the confidence and competence to implement genomic medicine within their practice, bringing the benefits of genomics to patients and families at the most appropriate point in their healthcare journey.

One of the key challenges has been helping healthcare professionals in diverse roles to understand how genomics can be used in their practice, so she has worked with colleagues in HEIW to develop GWEN (Genomics Wider workforce Education Navigator), an AI-based tool which asks users to input their current clinical role, in order to explain how and when genomics is relevant to their specific role, and to link them to reputable resources to understand this further. This sits alongside the genomics capability framework, which enables healthcare professionals to self-assess their capability to use genomics, and again helps them to navigate to useful education resources.