Genetics for patients and public: what I should know about genetics?

The answer of the question depends on individuals.

If you are a patient, you might want to know about:
-Is it a genetic disorder? Even I am the only one affected in my family.
-Who and where I should go for genetic service?
-Which tests can confirmed or make a diagnosis?
-Do my children take any risk to develop such a genetic disorders?
-etc.

If you are a relative of affected family member, you may want to asked someone about:
-Do my father or my mom has a genetic disorder?
-Do I take any risk to develop such a genetic disorders?
-If it is likely to occur, can I prevent or cure that disease?
-etc.

There are millions of web-based resources and many are devoted for patient information. How can I choose one from them? If you go to the popular search engine like Google, you will easily end up with massive unrelated informations about genes, genomes, genetic diseases, cloning, stem cells, ... .

So these are some recommendations for effectively search through the ocean of informations:
If you have an establish diagnosis, you could go for the disease support groups first.
: There are a lot of support groups working in helping and guiding the patients and families suffered with various diseases. They usually provided useful background knowledge about the disease and management, and they often provided linked to the most relevant web-links. Even the disease is very extremely rare, you can start with support group for the rare disorders that may give you an overview about genetics, and service.

If you suspect that your or your family mamber's health-related condition is caused from genetic component, you may start with directories. These will give you the information about where and who you should contact in your regions. Professions who care or deal with that problems are namely: clinical geneticists, genetic counselors, genetic nurses.