The reason why there’s an increased demand for health coaches in the healthcare system responds to the crucial role these practitioners play in the integral wellbeing of their patients.

Modern western medicine has always seen the human body as a sum of parts.

Therefore, it has focused on treating each area and condition separately when it’s affected.
Instead of a preventive approach that reduces the number of diseases of a person, the western health system has focused on treating symptoms and illnesses once they've appeared.

Today, Studies demonstrated that to stop the decline in public health and promote future improvements in quality of life, we need a more comprehensive approach. Here is where the role of health coaches in healthcare enters the game.

What is health coaching, and why is it important?

Health coaching consists of the active and continued guidance of the patient towards adopting habits to improve the immunity and general health of their bodies.
What does this mean?

Health coaches get more involved in your day-to-day life than any traditional practitioner would. It focuses on attention and guidance outside the clinic and health system.
It helps empower patients to have better control and participation in their quality of life and health. While health coaching doesn't treat diseases specifically, it provides guidelines to live a life with fewer illnesses and conditions.

A health coach may help you in:

Managing chronic digestive conditions
Losing weight
Managing diabetes
Managing stress and creating sleep habits
Developing meal plans according to your energy needs
Motivating you and developing a healthier mindset and lifestyle
Managing chronic pain and other chronic diseases.

The importance and demand of health coaches in the healthcare system covers the gap at traditional practitioners and doctors can't afford to cover.
Coaches can provide follow-up and detailed guidance when a regular doctor would say something like: “eat better, do more exercise and come in a month.”
Anyone can get lost from there and be unable to accomplish their health goal.
The role of the health coach would be to teach each patient what it means to eat better and do more exercise. They would evaluate their different needs in distinct fields like:

Caloric and energy needs
Sleep routines and capacity
Workout routines
Distribution of life routines and food regimes
Motivation and structure

Health coaches cover the part that doctors can't, so doctors can focus on urgent situations. There's a need for health coaching in the healthcare system to complement the traditional approach and deliver better results in public health.

Why do health coaches play a decisive role in improving public health?

Like we've been drawing up until now, there's been a decline in the population's general health. While technology and medicine advance at vortex rates, chronic diseases and lack of monitoring lead the healthcare system to collapse.

Some of the most alarming statistics that show the importance and demand of health coaches in healthcare are:

Six out of ten Americans suffer from at least one chronic disease, while four out of ten suffer two chronic illnesses or more.
94% of Americans don't include healthy behaviors in their day-to-day lifestyle, which could counteract chronic illness.
There's a shortage projection of up to 120,000 health practitioners within the next ten years.
Nine out of ten patients declare they need further guidance on managing chronic illness.
Only three out of ten patients say they get proper follow-up from their doctors between consultations.

While doctors are crucial for the health system, it's become evident that a more patient-focused approach is required to improve general health.
Differences between the traditional approach and health coaching approach: how health coaching can benefit the health system
Health coaching focuses on providing happiness and a better quality of life to the patients. In that sense, health coaches encourage the patient to be informed and aware of what's happening to their bodies and what habits they can adopt to improve their condition.

To illustrate the difference, let's take a look at some comparisons:

While traditional doctors stand up as the experts in medicine and the patient is expected to obey, in health coaching, the patient is the only connoisseur figure about their own life.
Traditional doctors set a unique solution for the patient's problem. Health coaches provide information for the patient to cover their own needs.
Traditional doctors have the last word on what's healthy for patients. Health coaches allow patients to decide their priorities and the way to go.
Traditional doctors focus on demanding the patient comply with their instructions. Coaches promote the positive features of the patient and guide them in how to improve their behavior.
Regular doctors expect patients to change as soon as they tell them to, while coaches identify the mental and emotional barriers in the patient and work towards them.
According to the Australian Journal of general practice, implementing health coaches in the healthcare system can increase patient satisfaction and treatment effectiveness.
But not only the patient's outcome and quality of life would improve. Empowering patients to enhance their health actively also represents a relief in the already overloaded health system.
The more the patients implement positive habits, the fewer they will rely on medical practices to combat illnesses and chronic diseases.

Final thoughts

The demand and importance of health coaching for healthcare have increased considerably in the last five years, and the reason is pretty evident.
Regular doctors can no longer cover the population's needs in everyday health. And this deficit results in more diseases, thus overloading the health system.
While this career is still incipient, there're already several training programs to become a health coach. And chances are, this discipline will continue growing as it proves practically beneficial for both the patient and the regular medical practitioner.
In the end, it's about providing the specialized type of care that no other figure can fill right now and, in consequence, improving the quality of life and health of the general population.

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