Blog

Thank you to the communities, Murrumbidgee PHN, Live Better for Partnering with MediCoach and to the wonderful General Practices that were involved and continue to be involved in this project. The aim of supporting 12 identified General Practices to engage in the PHN’s approach to reducing the impact of chronic disease, the Lifestyle and Weight Management Program used a co-design and pilot process to design a multi-component approach that addresses three lifestyle areas: nutrition, physical activity and psychological approaches to behavioural change; and to upskill the general practice teams.

As well as producing positive outcomes for General Practices and participants, the Lifestyle and Weight Management program is expected to:

Improve the number of GPs that routinely take and record biometric measurements; and,Ensure that the program is sustainable in the longer term after the expiration of its funding in July 2019.

Key outcomes for GPs and participants in the program to date are illustrated by the testimonial provided by Jodi Culbert and reproduced here with her permission:

“Assisting patients to make changes in their lifestyle is an integral part of working as a GP these days. But, despite our best efforts, its easy to get stuck knowing what needs to be done but not seeing any changes. Working with Medicoach in monthly webinars on our GP practice healthy lifestyle project helped to arm us with the skills to not only “know and tell” about the changes that patients need to make but to find new ways to help motivate patients take action and make meaningful change. There are many ways to learn and practice the skills needed for health coaching, but most require a large time commitment and are pitched at allied health or counsellors and don’t understand the constraints of General Practice. In busy GP work life, we needed something, brief, as well as realistic and practical and the webinars achieved this. Logging in each time, it was encouraging to hear how others were going with implementing some of the coaching techniques. And with Kim’s expert facilitation, we could really explore the road blocks. The combination of Kim’s ability to translate evidence- based motivational interviewing theory into practical strategies, combined with the real world experiences of colleagues on line really made the one hour investment worthwhile. The techniques were brief and immediately useable and crossed over from the specific project into other areas of clinical practice. The extensive knowledge that Kim brings to the webinars is matched by contagious enthusiasm and a real teaching skill that can be lacking in some content experts. The true testament to the utility and enjoyment of the webinar learning process was at the end of the project when participants, some of whom were health coaching sceptics in the beginning, lobbied for funding so that the webinars could continue. if you are keen to improve your ability to move patients from inaction to feeling empowered to make health changes then I would highly recommend Medicoach webinars.”