Coaching patients to be active, informed partners in their health.

In this issue, the article “A Physician Communication Coaching Program,” by McDaniel and colleagues (see record 2020-40858-007), addresses this untenable situation through the coaching of physicians as part of continuing medical education. The coaching program hopes to explode the traditional paradigm of physician–patient interaction. An alternative paradigm is the philosophy of health coaching. While McDaniel et al. (2020) describe coaching physicians, the new paradigm involves coaching patients. Health coaching can be summed up in the adage: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Coaching is teaching “how to fish” by assisting patients to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become informed, active participants in their care (Ghorob & Bodenheimer, 2013). Rather than telling patients what to do, coaching asks patients what they are willing and able to do to improve their health, meeting them where they are. Perhaps a patient with diabetes eats a pint of ice cream every night and cannot give it up. Rather than threatening, scolding, or imploring, physicians and other health personnel engage in a discussion of an action plan that the patient agrees to—perhaps eating only a half-pint of ice cream each night. Success with the realistic action plan breeds more success and eventually the ice cream becomes a rare treat. Randomized controlled trials demonstrate that this approach—compared with...
Source: Families, Systems, and Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research