During my first year of medical school, I found health coaching to be an interesting concept but was also skeptical about its effectiveness. Essentially health coaches meet with patients who have chronic health issues such as diabetes, smoking, alcoholism and spend time formulating ways to improve a patient’s health. The health coach does not provide solutions but instead helps guide the patient to create her own step by step plan on improving health. This seemed rather inefficient as the discussion would take a long time and the patient would need to be motivated to start thinking about making a lifestyle change. However after our simulated health coaching sessions, I could see the benefits of this method of coaching. A patient has the luxury of sitting down with a professional to discuss her health and leaves the session with a reasonable plan to improve her health. Furthermore, the patient gains a sense of accomplishment from generating a plan from her own ideas that would fit well with her personal schedule. Finally, the patient is able to stay on task by meeting frequently with a health coach to track her progress and adjust the plan accordingly. Therefore I gained a newfound appreciation for health coaching through this exercise. I was also able to help out other medical students as my video was used as part of an e-module for health coaching.
I chose to use health coaching as a demonstration of the patient care competency as it emphasizes the idea that patient care is a cooperative endeavor. The old idea of a paternalistic physician is no longer and is now replaced by informed and interactive decision making. Health coaching really displayed this idea as it attempts to draw out solutions for disease prevention and health promotion by encouraging patients to suggest ideas that are feasible for them.
In my future career, I plan to recommend health coaching to my patients so they can reap the long term benefits from this practice.
The video below shows the longer version of my health coaching interview session where the patient and I discussed small steps to help better control her diabetes.
https://vitals.osumc.edu/articulate/4737/player.html <– shorter version on slide 9