Why a Health Coach?

What is Coaching?

Coaching is about fostering directed purposeful change. Coaching has been shown to be effective in developing personal insight and shaping and reinforcing desired behaviours to enhance performance or life experiences. [1,2]

Coaching has been defined as a therapeutic relationship between you and your coach with the objective of assisting you in achieving your professional or personal goals. [3]

Coaching combines philosophies, theories, and evidence-based interventions and techniques from a variety of fields, including behavioural medicine, positive psychology, sociology, business leadership and management, and sports performance psychology. [1,4]

Coaching has grown in popularity among business professionals and individuals as a means of enhancing performance, managing stress, and achieving professional and personal goals. [5,6]

Almost all forms of coaching share several characteristics, such as the underlying assumption that people have an inherent capacity for growth and development, as well as the ability to construct their own solutions, rather than simply analysing the problems. [1]

Coaching can be defined in a number of different ways, including:

Coaching is the process of assisting you in realising your full potential and performing at your peak. [7]
Coaching is a tutoring or instructional approach that focuses on improving your performance and skill development. [8]
Coaching is the art of assisting you in improving your performance, learning, and self-development. [9]

What is Health Coaching?

The term "health coach" refers to a service provided by healthcare professionals with the purpose of empowering you to improve your health, well-being, performance, and overall quality of life. [5,10]

Health coaching combines evidence-based interventions and techniques from a variety of disciplines including behavioural medicine, positive psychology, health and coaching psychology, and sports performance coaching. [5]

Health coaching is a patient-centred approach that focuses on supporting you in weighing your options, making informed decisions, identifying and overcoming obstacles, and sustaining long-term behavioural changes consistent with your personal values, purpose, and goals. [11]

What Is Integrative Health Coaching?

In contrast to the disease-focused approach that is commonly used in conventional healthcare, integrative health coaching is based on integrative medicine principles with an emphasis on holistic health coaching or whole-person approach. [12]

The integrative medicine approach to health coaching considers the mind, body, and spirit in all aspects of life and incorporates complementary and alternative practices to assist you in the process of change. [12]

Integrative health coaching is a patient-centred process of self-discovery, goal setting and building internal motivation by linking your goals to your values and sense of purpose. [13]

Mindfulness is also a significant aspect of the integrative health coaching process, which is the practice of increasing self-awareness and cultivating intrinsic motivation to change behaviour. [12]

This implies that integrative health coaches must obtain additional training, skills, and credentials in integrative medicine and mindfulness.

Why Integrative Health Coaching?

It is no secret that stress and disease can have a negative impact on your health and wellbeing. A professional integrative health coach is becoming increasingly sought after and essential for those interested in making successful and long-lasting changes.

As more people seek effective ways to improve their lives, integrative health coaching can assist you in changing your behaviour in order to prevent disease and improve your health, well-being, and overall quality of life.

It has been demonstrated that health coaching significantly improves behavioural, psychological, and social outcomes, [14] including diet, lifestyle, type 2 diabetes, weight management, physical activity, mental health, medication adherence, social support, and physical health status. [11,15,16]

Health coaching has also been shown to help individuals with cardiovascular risk factors change their behaviour, resulting in increased physical activity levels, improved dietary choices, increased health responsibility, and improved ability to cope with stress. [16,17]

What is the Role of a Health Coach

The role of the health coach is to facilitate and accelerate your learning process by increasing your health literacy on specific related health topics. [5,17]

This includes assisting you in reinforcing and maintaining positive behaviours, developing and implementing self-care management strategies, and achieving your personal health and well-being goals. [5,17]

Do You Need Help Get on Top of Life! Request a Call Back to learn more.

DR ALAIN FRABOTTA is a highly qualified and experienced integrative chiropractor and functional medicine naturopathic doctor in Sydney since 1995.

With a specific interest in the treatment, prevention, and management of complex chronic diseases -

Alain is an Executive Coach in Sydney who combines Life Coaching, Health Coaching, and Lifestyle Medicine to enhance all aspects of your life.

Alain provides a holistic, person-centred, multidisciplinary, solution-focused, results-driven approach.

He integrates chiropractic, naturopathic and functional medicine, nutrition, counselling, and coaching to help you bridge the gap between your physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Alain is the leading integrative chiropractic and functional medicine naturopathic doctor in Sydney who wants to help you achieve your health and well-being goals as well as reach your full potential in life.

He is also dedicated to providing you with a personalised, targeted treatment approach that employs functional and genomic assessments to diagnose and optimise your health, well-being, and performance.

Learn more about DR ALAIN FRABOTTA

Health Coaching in Primary Care

Integrating health coaching into primary care can assist patients in making and maintaining healthy lifestyle changes. [18]

Integrating health coaching can play an important role in the prevention, early intervention, and management of lifestyle-related diseases, increasing patient and physician satisfaction. [18]

Health Coaching bridges the gap between medical recommendations and your ability to successfully implement those recommendations into life. [11]

Health coaching has been shown to enhance the quality, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of chronic disease management while promoting positive social and psychological outcomes. [14,15,19]

This includes improvements in self-efficacy, physical activity, mental health status, and healthy lifestyle behaviours. [14,15,19]

The Integrative Health Coaching Process

Since a health coach is a healthcare professional who has been trained in behaviour change theories, motivational strategies, and communication techniques to assist you in developing and acquiring the intrinsic motivation and skills needed to make long-term changes to improve your health and well-being. [20,21]

A combination of telephone, face-to-face, and web-based coaching has been shown to provide good patient outcomes. [14]

Health Coaches employ a variety of specialised tools to promote and support you to make positive lifestyle and behavioural changes. These tools help to ensure consistency and efficacy in the delivery of health coaching. [11]

This includes tools like the Personal Mission, Aspiration, and Purpose (MAP), the Personal Health Inventory (PHI), and SMART Goals. [11]

The Personal Health Inventory is a self-assessment tool that helps you identify your personal strengths and opportunities, as well as improve your health and behaviours and develop a health plan. [11]

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+ REFERENCES

[1] Ammentorp, J., Uhrenfeldt, L., Angel, F., Ehrensvärd, M., Carlsen, E. B., & Kofoed, P. E. (2013). Can life coaching improve health outcomes? A systematic review of intervention studies. BMC health services research, 13, 428.

[2] Grant, A.M. (2001). Towards a Psychology of Coaching: The Impact of Coaching on Metacognition, Mental Health and Goal Attainment.

[3] Spence, G. B., & Grant, A. M. (2007). Professional and peer life coaching and the enhancement of goal striving and well-being: An exploratory study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2, 185–194.

[4] Tsai, L., & Barr, J. (2021). Coaching in small and medium business sectors (SMEs): a narrative systematic review. Small Enterprise Research, 28(1), 1–22.

[5] Palmer, S., Tubbs, I., & Whybrow, A. (2003). Health coaching to facilitate the promotion of healthy behaviour and achievement of health-related goals. International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, 41(3), 91–93.

[6] Yossi Ives. (2008). What is ‘Coaching’? An Exploration of Conflicting Paradigms. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 6(2), 100–113.

[7] Whitmore J. Coaching for Performance. The principles and practice of coaching and leadership. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing; 2017

[8] Parsloe, E. (1995) Coaching, Mentoring and Assessing, Kogan Page, London.

[9] Downey, M. (1999) Effective Coaching, Orion Business Books, London.

[10] An, S., & Song, R. (2020). Effects of health coaching on behavioral modification among adults with cardiovascular risk factors: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Patient Education and Counseling, 103(10), 2029–2038.

[11] Malecki, H. L., Gollie, J. M., & Scholten, J. (2020). Physical Activity, Exercise, Whole Health, and Integrative Health Coaching. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America, 31(4), 649–663.

[12] Goble, K. L., Knight, S. M., Burke, S. C., Carawan, L. W., & Wolever, R. Q. (2017). Transformative change to 'a new me': a qualitative study of clients' lived experience with integrative health coaching. Coaching : an International Journal of Theory, Research & Practice, 10(1), 18–36.

[13] Wolever, R. Q., Caldwell, K. L., Wakefield, J. P., Little, K. J., Gresko, J., Shaw, A., Duda, L. V., Kosey, J. M., & Gaudet, T. (2011). Integrative Health Coaching: An Organizational Case Study. Explore (New York, N.Y.), 7(1), 30–36.

[14] Kivelä, K., Elo, S., Kyngäs, H., & Kääriäinen, M. (2014). The effects of health coaching on adult patients with chronic diseases: A systematic review. Patient Education and Counseling, 97(2), 147–157.

[15] Olsen JM, Nesbitt BJ. Health coaching to improve healthy lifestyle behaviors: an integrative review. Am J Health Promot 2010;25(1):e1–12.

[16] Sforzo, G. A., Kaye, M. P., Harenberg, S., Costello, K., Cobus-Kuo, L., Rauff, E., Edman, J. S., Frates, E., & Moore, M. (2020). Compendium of Health and Wellness Coaching: 2019 Addendum. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 14(2), 155–168.

[17] Singh, H. K., Kennedy, G. A., & Stupans, I. (2020). Competencies and training of health professionals engaged in health coaching: A systematic review. Chronic Illness, 1742395319899466–1742395319899466.

[18] Conn, S., & Curtain, S. (2019). Health coaching as a lifestyle medicine process in primary care. Australian Journal of General Practice, 48(10), 677–680.

[19] Hill, B., Richardson, B., & Skouteris, H. (2015). Do We Know How to Design Effective Health Coaching Interventions: A Systematic Review of the State of the Literature. American Journal of Health Promotion, 29(5), e158–e168.

[20] Wolever, R. Q., Simmons, L. A., Sforzo, G. A., Dill, D., Kaye, M., Bechard, E. M., Southard, M. E., Kennedy, M., Vosloo, J., & Yang, N. (2013). A Systematic Review of the Literature on Health and Wellness Coaching: Defining a Key Behavioral Intervention in Healthcare. Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 2(4), 38–57.

[21] Perlman, A. I., & Abu Dabrh, A. M. (2020). Health and Wellness Coaching in Serving the Needs of Today’s Patients: A Primer for Healthcare Professionals. Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 9, 2164956120959274–2164956120959274.