A painting by a former pediatric cancer patient hangs on the wall in Carrie Thompson’s exam room at Logan Health.  

It’s a reminder of her own childhood when, at age 7, her friend was diagnosed with cancer. Even from a young age, she knew she wanted to help people with cancer.  

“It’s kind of a full circle moment,” she says while looking at the art piece.  

A medical pioneer, Thompson is quadruple board certified and a doctoral trained nurse practitioner in genetics, oncology and primary care. She is passionate about the ability and future of genetic testing, a program she built from the ground up at Logan Health after over two decades as an oncology nurse and 20 years as a nurse practitioner.  

“I just always appreciated the importance of education and how important being educated is for keeping up with medical technology,” she said.  

That’s how she got into genetics, she said. Oncology adopted the practice of genetics early on, something she grew more interested in with each certification and degree.  

Officially listed as the Director of Genetics Development, Director of NP/PA Genomics Fellowship and a nurse practitioner with decades of experience in genetics and genomics, Thompson’s time at Logan Health has been reminiscent of her pioneering mentality, trailblazing a department herself. 

Today, she leads the Logan Health Digestive Center gastroenterology cancer genetic screening and surveillance program, a program she started.  

Before joining Logan in 2011 as a nurse practitioner, Thompson, who is originally from Canada, trailblazed across the West. In 2008, Thompson was awarded Nurse Practitioner of the Year for her work in developing a rural oncology program for Kootenai Medical Center, now known as Kootenai Health, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. 

The award came as a result of Thompson’s work to create a program to assist people living in rural areas in accessing treatments closer to home.  

Years of work as an oncology specialist enhanced Thompson's curiosity in genetics, leading her to lean more into preventative health care. At the time, there were limited resources for knowing when to genetically test someone and how to interpret the results.  

“So, I kind of took that on with my pioneering spirit as a challenge and said, ‘I’m going to figure this out,’” Thompson said.   

Thompson is one of two medical professionals in the state to graduate from an intensive course in genomic cancer risk assessment certification from City of Hope, a nonprofit clinical research center and hospital. 

There is also only one licensed geneticist in the state, Thompson said. It’s a smaller field, which is one reason she felt called to invest her time in genetic screening and preventative care.  

In 2017, Logan Health did not refer any patients for genetic testing. By 2020, Thompson had collected 10,324 screening papers, full of questions about family history and other genetic components to refer people for testing.  

“I wanted to study it and see what benefit population screening, really screening, would give when identifying patients that we should be testing,” she said. “And lo and behold, we were able to find a lot of patients that we should be offering genetic testing.” 

Her findings quickly began to grow, leading to the creation of the high-risk cancer screening and surveillance program. Now as the program’s lead, Thompson oversees around 350 people in a high-risk program, an established group of patients whose genetic results indicate close monitoring.  

“But what we’ve identified from looking at this process is that anybody can benefit from this,” Thompson said. “It’s gone from just cancer to across the lifespan, any genetic condition.”  

There is more excitement on the horizon for Thompson and her department. They were recently awarded a five-year National Institutes of Health grant on the established population screening process. They recently launched an app called PREMMplus as well, which is a simple screening technique that those in the hospital for any reason can utilize to address certain cancers.  

People with a high probability are then referred to Thompson and genetic testing to determine if they carry such changes. Preventative medicine can help prevent cancer or detect it at the earliest possible stage. 

“I think continuing to educate people about the importance of doing genetic testing is a goal of mine,” Thompson said. “You can identify the why something happened with testing. But what we’re seeing more and more is ways of tailoring that treatment, that precision medicine, to prevent some things from happening.” 

It’s a program that continues to grow, and Thompson looks forward to watching Logan’s genetic program and preventative care quality expand.  

Reporter Kate Heston may be reached at 758-4456 or [email protected].