“Hi, I’m PookieMD, your health coach.”
Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, it just did. I don’t know about you, but I went in to medicine to help people regain their health, and that vision includes maintaining and increasing patients health and well being. Unfortunately, Americans seem bent on eating, smoking and driving their way to chronic illness. However, there is a movement afloat called “Health Coaching.” What is a health coach? Well, my intrepid reader, I went off to find out.
As far as I can tell, a health coach is someone, not necessarily a health professional, that will coach/mentor a client (not a patient) towards increased wellness. Geez, I thought that was my job. According to my research, Duke University offers some training in this and lists the following as an explanation of what a health coach does:
- Help people clarify their health goals, and implement and sustain behaviors, lifestyles, and attitudes that are conducive to optimal health.
- Guide people in their personal care and health-maintenance activities.
- Assist people in reducing the negative impact made on their lives by chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Hilarious. Isn’t that the definition of what primary care is supposed to be about? But HOW on earth could you do that in 15 minutes? Answer: You can’t. And that is the crux of what is wrong with medicine. We spent years learning about diseases process, pharmaceuticals, pathology and zebras, but we didn’t learn the basics of positive psychology, encouraging change and guiding patients towards optimal health. Instead, this field will be taken over by ‘health coaches’ who have minimal training, little medical back ground, and no share in liability.
Here is what one be-a-health-coach website promotes:
- …earn at least $121 per hour (with out having to leave your home).
- how to find all the coaching clients you can handle.
- How your life can take on new meaning as you begin making a HUGE difference in people’s lives and the Health Care industry in general.
- …How you can immediately make money as a Professional Health Coach.
Now, I think we physicians SHOULD ALL BE HEALTH COACHES. What I find so frustrating was that this is why I went in to medicine, and I can’t do it because I am constrained by the medical/legal/government/insurance bureaucracy that is today’s medicine. Maybe I should forget that I am an MD, and focus on being a “Health Coach”. I’d like to earn $121 per hour from home. I think it would be invaluable to my patients to have me as a physician BE their health coach along with managing their medical problems. Hmmm, do I smell “retainer medicine ”?
Tags: concierge medicine, doctors, health coach, medical practice, physicians, primary care, retainer medicine
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I am an RN, and our patient education is also supposed to cover a lot of these “health coach” pointers. So, who are these health coaches?
In a typical office, patients have come to not expect advice from a doctor but rather “OK, You have xxx. Here’s a bunch of pills and some tests to do”. I think our job is now to tell them these things are often not only useless but sometimes harmful. They seem to agree if we take the time (that we don’t have) to explain.
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I am currently training to be a health coach / health educator via http://www.niwh.org (National Institute of Whole Health). This is a highly reputable organization. They do not promise “$121 per hour from home” or anything like it. But qualifying via niwh will enable me to work with physicians, and will allow patients to claim my fee via their insurance company. Also, to even be accepted onto the niwh program, you need an accredited degree and some form of professional training in an allied health field. I have already trained in nutrition, physiology, and yoga therapy. Niwh students are thoroughly questioned before being accepted on to the program.
I completely empathize with your frustration as a physician about not having time to deal with the underlying or psychological issues presented by a patient, and how can you work holistically with them in short 15-minute segments? I hope that the role of health coaches and physicians will increasingly complement each other in the coming years, as this new field of health care becomes more popular and NECESSARY if we are to avoid a nation of sick people on medication and no hope of getting to the root of the problem. Let’s work together, not put each other down.