Genetic counseling and the advanced practice oncology nursing role in a hereditary cancer prevention clinic: hereditary breast cancer focus (part II).

Hereditary breast cancer (BC) is heterogeneous to the extent that no two high-risk patients can be considered as being the same. These individual differences are magnified further when patients' emotional response to all facets of hereditary BC are considered, particularly issues surrounding gene testing. A series of case histories have been provided that illustrate the wide range of attitudes, feelings, and emotional responses explained by patients when learning of their hereditary cancer risk status. The role of the oncology nurse-genetic counselor has been described in each of these family reports.