Thushara Priyawansha

I am Thushara Priyawansha from Sri Lanka. I joined the department of genomic medicine in the Manchester Rare Conditions Centre, Manchester, UK in Sep 2023. This overseas component in the training for post MD-Paediatric clinical genetics prospectus in Sri Lanka was supervised by Prof. Siddharth Banka and Dr Catherine Breen.

I had the privilege to study various aspects of genomics services in the UK over last 18 months. I took part in clinical consultations done by clinical geneticists and genetic counsellors. This offered me a chance to interact with patients at various age groups and to get exposed to their life experience though genre of genetic conditions in the UK. At a one stage I had the opportunity to conduct a clinic for familial hypercholesterolemia, under the full patronage of the team of consultant clinical geneticists headed by Prof. Siddharth Banka.

During stay in MRCC, I was benefited with liaising with the genomic laboratory services. The cutting-edge technology the laboratory utilised, diagnostic algorithm, genetic diagnosis protocols and technical aspects of some of tests were among many that I had learnt with them.

MRCC pioneers a large scale of research across UK as well as across the globe, where I was given the chance to interact with many of these researchers and inspire their experience in genomic research platform. I had the opportunity to participate in few of them such as Myhre syndrome study and EIF5A study. I have engaged in the project of categorisation of publication from MRCC over last 5 years, which was a new and interesting work that I did.

The department is fully occupied with all the stakeholders in genomic medicine, with whom I had the chance to embrace their perspectives of genetic medical services at various activities, such as departmental meetings, multi-disciplinary team meetings, lab meetings and educational seminars.  The additional events that I got the opportunity to take part are patients group activities, like Kabuki Day, We Are Rare etc.

Further aspect in medicine, I had the great opportunity to collaborate with audit studies done by MRCC colleges which were helpful to understand the conduct of genomic services in the UK. LAC audit and R59 Audit were scrutinising the patient care during the recent past to understand the patient management state.

MRCC hosted conferences that I could attend and expose to latest updates in genomic education. 19^th MDC, ESHG course etc infused me with many world-renowned geneticists, scientists etc. A most important workshop I engaged while being in the centre was variant interpretation course.

In a nutshell, this training course was an exceptionally important for my country to pave the path of paediatric clinical geneticist for the first time in Sri Lanka. I had an incredible opportunity to be a member of this prestigious genomic family to light up my career ahead in the genomic world.