National Society of Health Coaches

Health and Nutrition

Not too long ago, Mary Maloy, Registered Dietitian, NSHC Certified Health Coach, and member of NSHC’s Professional Advisory Board, assembled an amazing cookbook of her special recipes that she developed especially for her local New Haven Fire Department (NHFD).  Mary knows the impact health and nutrition play in the lives of these firefighters Mary appears in this photo above[...]

Generational Health Coaching

If you’re only considering the clinician’s point of reference and the patient’s diagnosis, probably not much. However, if you as a clinician are looking to make the patient-provider relationship a more meaningful and effective one for both parties, it’s within the clinician’s purview to consider another aspect of the patient and family to make this[...]

Food for Health and Behavior

‘Tis the season for bringing home fresh fruit and vegetables from local farmers’ markets or harvesting those from your own garden! And what flavor there is from these wonderful gems, not to mention the exceptional nutritional value… While canning and freezing during the harvest is dawn-to-dusk work until all is finished, the pay-off of fresh[...]

Faith and Health Behavior

This time of year is special to millions of people throughout the world, as they draw nearer to their faith-based beliefs. Research indicates that religious faith has many positive effects on health behavior even though it’s uncommon to find clinicians and practitioners ever tapping into this hidden pot of patient gold!  Saad and deMedeiros say[...]

Tips to Actively Engage Patients/Clients

Tips to Actively Engage Patients!  The Center for Advancing Health (2010) states that “patient engagement is not synonymous with “compliance”, which signifies a directive that is responded to; rather than a person’s involvement in the process whereby information and professional advice is in concert with one’s own needs, abilities, and preferences.While the healthcare provider may[...]

Cognitive Reframing

Exercise Physiologist Stops Selling Exercise! …and Her Clients Reap the Rewards! There’s a great poem written by Joseph Malins called The Fence or The Ambulance, circa 1895.  For us today, we can build a fence at the edge of the cliff to prevent those from falling (prevention) or put an ambulance at the bottom of[...]

Clinician Empathy in Patient Care

Empathy in Health Coaching With all these positive effects of empathy for both patient and clinician, it might be surprising that some research demonstrates that clinicians believe they show more empathy than patients say they do. There are several possible reasons for this: task-oriented work assignments, rushing from task to task, patient workloads, emotional carry-over[...]

Benefits of Motivational Interviewing

Are Certain Clinician Personalities Attracted to the Use of MI?   As I worked with these patients, I began to notice something special taking place in the relationships I had with each of them and their families. The patients were very engaged and open to share their thoughts about their care and what they wanted[...]

Evidence-Based Health Coaching

Instead of telling the patient what to do as many clinicians still do, the conversational skills of the clinician health coach helps the patient to identify any ambivalence to behavior change that exists. This conversation will include many of the following attributes as well as many others: •    What is most important to the patient[...]

Health Coach vs Wellness Coaching

The National Society of Health Coaches, led by clinicians, is taking the lead in differentiating coaching roles and clarifying definitions in the interest of public safety, consumer awareness, and legalities.