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Health coaching or wellness coaching, is a relatively new movement that is gaining traction within the health care industry. A health coach is a person (they can be a licensed practitioner or not) who helps individuals develop and sustain behaviors that will cultivate and encourage optimal health for that individual. Wellness coaches also instruct people with chronic illnesses or conditions on how to make lifestyle changes to minimize the severity of the illness and the effects of the chronic disease. It is a process of health education and promotion within a coaching context to help people achieve their health goals and enhance well-being. It has been stated that the motivation health coaching comes from the patients themselves. This internal motivation increases the likelihood that the patient's ambivalence towards behavioral changes will be replaced with a readiness to make the necessary changes to create a healthy lifestyle. Wellness coaching is intended to replace the you have X disease so take Y pills method of doctor/patient relationships.

Health coaching sounds like a great plan and there are many legitimate sources of information on the subject. Many people enjoy having someone involved in their life who can guide and motivate them to healthier decisions. But what do doctors think about the health coaching trend? But if primary care physicians were providing the kind of care given by health coaches then there would be no need for health coaches at all. Except they don’t. Something is wrong.

Kevin goes on to say that one problem could be that doctors can't give that kind of care within the current paradigm of the 15-minute office visit. The frustration with the health care system is shared at another doctor's. He explains, I think that’s why HEALTH COACHES like Jeanette Lee providing a very valuable health and wellness coaching. 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. That is why I believe that Health Coach and Wellness Coach like Jeanette Lee are someone people can turn to.

Websites like Aware4Life.com offer training courses for those who requires them. Aware4Life has begun offering health and wellness coaching services and training in this field and many corporations are also hiring health coaches for their employees.

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