Health Coaching in a Medical Practice with Dr. Judith Boyce

In this special episode of Health Coach Radio (with a live-online audience), our guest is Dr. Judith Boyce. Dr. Judith became a health coach after she spent a career as a doctor – after she spent a career as a nurse. This is because she saw health coaching as the way forward for doctors, nurses and the medical system in general.

 

Dr. Judith has developed the Health Coaching in Medical Practice certification course (found at https://www.primalhealthcoach.com/health-coaching-medical-practices-specialist-certification/), which educates and trains coaches to go forth and conquer in the medical system. If that is the path you see yourself taking, listen closely to this episode and learn.

 

In our conversation with Dr. Judith, we dig into topics such as how she got fed up with how medicine was being practiced, how the PHCI program applies to other countries (other than the USA), and why Dr. Judith is the perfect person to learn from.

 

We also dig into what type of person would be a good fit for this line of learning and coaching, what types of certifications employers are looking for, what versions of health coaches exist right now, and why doctors need health coaches’ help. Plus, Dr. Judith gives concrete advice about how to get your foot in the door and work with, not against, the system to benefit both the client and the doctor.

 

Connect with Dr. Judith at:

Website: https://judithboycemd.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drjudithboyce/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retreatmd/

 

Episode Overview:

0:00 Introduction to Dr. Judith Boyce

1:09 The Role of Health Coaching in Medical Practices

2:31 Dr. Boyce's Journey from Nurse to Doctor to Health Coach

6:59 Transition to Becoming a Primal Health Coach

9:32 The Global Need for Health Coaching in Healthcare Systems

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Our guest today is Dr. Judith Boyce. Judith became a health coach after she
spent a career as a doctor, after she spent a career as a nurse,
because she saw that coaching was the path forward for doctors, nurses,
patients, and the medical system in general.
She's developed the Health Coaching in Medical Practices certification course,

(00:21):
which educates and trains coaches to go forth and conquer in the medical system.
If that's the path you always we saw yourself taking as a coach, listen close and learn.
Hi, I'm Erin Power. And I'm Laura Rupsis. We're certified health coaches,
and this is Health Coach Radio.
This podcast is about the art, science, and business of health coaching.

(00:44):
We share our insider tips to help you become a better coach and entrepreneur.
And we interview expert guests to discover how they've made it in this growing field.
It's time for health coaches to make an impact. It's time for Health Coach Radio. All right, Dr.
Judith Boyce. Boy, we've been waiting for this one for a while.

(01:05):
We're so excited to have you on.
How are you? Thank you. I'm great. Thank you very much. Thank you.
This is a special episode because we are going to be launching something that
has been in the the works for a while.
But just to kind of set the stage for folks listening on Health Coach Radio that, you.

(01:27):
The growth, particularly with the, I guess, the advancement of the National
Board for Health and Wellness Coaching has become this ever-growing career path
within the medical system, the healthcare system.
And the problem is there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect,
I think, sometimes between the health coaching community and the healthcare community.

(01:47):
Yet there are so many health coaches that want to help, that want to be a part
of this process to make the healthcare care system better and just work better for everyone.
So you are an MD.
Yeah. So a health coach. So you are uniquely well positioned and qualified,
I think, to have this conversation.
So we start every interview with you telling your story.

(02:09):
So I kind of can a little lead up here, but we would love for you to share your
origin story on how, what took you into medicine, what led you to become a coach, lay it on us.
Okay. Well, it is a long and winding road.
So I'll try to make it quick. I was a nurse before I was a doctor.
And I was about, I was a nurse for 20 years before I did medicine.

(02:32):
So I was about six or seven years into nursing, and I became a triathlete.
So I got hooked on kind of exercise. And I think actually that most of your
health coaches in the audience will get that because when you start the whole fitness lifestyle of,
you know, what you eat and how you rest and the exercise part becomes really

(02:56):
important part of your life.
So I nursed for another, you know, number of years and then didn't want to do that anymore.
I wanted to do something in health education, Haitian health promotion.
So I went back to university and I did a degree in health education.
And at that point in time, it was the 80s and the whole corporate health,

(03:16):
which is what I wanted to do.
Like now, the economy collapsed and there weren't any jobs. So I loved my program
and I was totally excited.
Into kind of staying and doing a master's. And one of my advisors says,
why don't you, you're so, you know, you're so ticked off at doctors,
why don't you become one?

(03:37):
You know, yeah, I was ticked off. And I'll stay on that for a minute.
Because as a nurse, I worked in intensive care units and emergency departments
and that kind of thing. It was in sort of intensive care.
And I just got fed up with being told what to do
by people that I didn't think knew what the
patients wanted because as nurses we talked to
the patients a lot and these people were giving orders

(04:00):
and walking away and it was like they have no idea what the patient really wants
or needs so uh you know that's why I was ticked off sort of at the medical field
and my family's medical and you know and so it was it was kind of transformative
for me at that point in time.
So I wanted to do something in health and in that, that had health at its basis.

(04:23):
So I applied to med school, and I got in at the age of, you know, kind of 39.
And I thought, wow, oh, they accepted me. Well, I guess I better go. I did.
I went through medicine. And it was 1994 when I started.
And in 1996, I got turned on to Dr.

(04:48):
Andrew Weil and the folks at the University of Arizona in integrative medicine.
So that was it. I wanted to do integrative medicine, and that was my calling, right?
So after med school, I did family practice.
And then I went down to, I didn't actually go, it was an online course,
but I went to Tucson a lot and did and did an extra fellowship,

(05:11):
associate fellowship in integrative medicine.
And so that was the way I practiced medicine for 20 years was in the conventional system.
But within my own practice, it was an integrative practice.
So we always, patients and I always talked about non-pharmaceutical,
non-procedure-based ways to go first, unless it was an emergency,

(05:34):
you know, unless it was a medical emergency. So.
So that's kind of where I was in my head with it anyway.
And then getting to the primal, another transformative sort of experience was
my own menopause journey and the weight gain and the fatigue and everything that went with that.

(05:56):
And I tried every diet in the books and was advising patients,
you know, the same thing because lots of women came to my practice.
Um i found uh the primal
blueprint and tried it and it worked
like a charm for me you know 15 pounds of
belly fat not overnight but over
a couple of years i went back to the gym and started lifting

(06:19):
where i had just been running and swimming and biking before that
with uh no success sort of
at the end of at the end
of all the years of trying it was just the weight was just coming on
like and not coming off so I had a great experience with
primal blueprint I was totally sold on it and was and was
recommending it to patients and then I was retiring

(06:40):
okay COVID yeah I turned 65 I was retiring it all happened in the same year
2020 and I thought oh actually it happened 2019 because I started the program
in 2019 I thought I'm gonna be a health coach I mean It was a no-brainer. It just made sense.
I'm going to be a primal health coach. I looked at the program, and the rest is history.

(07:06):
It's just been a fantastic experience.
Wow. That's such a journey. It's such a wild journey and it's so interesting.
And it, although it's so unique, it probably in a lot of ways mimics what a
lot of us practicing health coaches and primal health coaches have experienced

(07:27):
from the perspective of this conventional path,
doesn't seem to be working for people. Right.
And so if nothing changes, nothing changes, just, I'm going to try something
unconventional. That's where we all kind of come in.
What I loved about your story, I thought was interesting was,
first of all, you were practicing integrative medicine inside the conventional medicine realm.

(07:51):
So like, were you a complete black sheep? How did that go for you?
Okay. Yeah. So I was divorced.
So, And that's important because I didn't have a second income in my house to
fund me if I wanted to be a complete renegade and start an integrative practice.
And if I lost my job, I wouldn't have been able to pay my student loans back.

(08:15):
So it's called you figure out how to...
To work with what you believe in your heart is the best way to practice.
But I do think things are better now.
Okay. Well, that's, that's promising depending, depending on where you are and
depending on the practice.
That's what I was going to ask is because one of the questions I'm getting,

(08:36):
so, and so for folks listening to the podcast, this is a little bit of a unique podcast.
I don't know if I said this since we started, uh, clicked record,
but that we got a bit of a studio audience here.
We have, as many of you know, Aaron and I work for a school,
Primal Health Coach Institute.
And we've been in the process of developing more courses. You've developed one
for us. So we're going to get into that in a minute.

(08:57):
But when I'm talking to people about this particular tract, right,
in terms of coaching, health coaching in a medical practice,
one of the questions that comes up is, yeah, but is it very US centric?
And can I use a lot of the content that's in this program where I live,
whether it's in the UK or Canada or Australia or somewhere else in Europe.
And my answer is even though the medical systems might be set up differently

(09:21):
in terms of who oversees it and how care is paid for resoundingly across the
sort of developed world, worldwide.
The problems are the same, right?
So to your point, like depends on where you are, it might be a little bit easier
to kind of, you know, add some naturopathic type stuff in terms of diet and

(09:42):
nutrition, um, without any blowback, but generally speaking that the,
challenges are the same, right? I mean, do you have some thoughts on that and opinion on that?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's the basis. Okay, so chronic disease,
numbers or burden, as they call it across the world, is pretty much the same.

(10:05):
It's a little bit worse in some countries than in other countries.
But the burden of chronic disease in developed countries, and also in countries
that are low and middle income countries, those people don't have the same quality of health care.
Um so the death rates are a little bit higher are
very much the same the problems are very much the same we used

(10:26):
the u.s health care system because the company is based
in the u.s and it seemed there had to be for me a reference point to to go to
statistics and to go to what's happening where so i happen to be canadian but
i've worked in canada i've worked in the states and i've worked I worked in Bermuda,

(10:47):
which is a United Kingdom Commonwealth, British Commonwealth country.
So when I was researching for the program, I researched basically U.S.,
Canada, U.K., Australia, New Zealand.
So the major English-speaking countries. countries but
then I sort of went back afterwards and

(11:08):
looked at the comparisons of the health care systems in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development they do statistics on the health care systems
for their member countries and their member countries are most of the EU and
a couple of South American countries so there's a really good.
Broad, you know, sort of snippet of healthcare system comparisons there,

(11:31):
they've all got the same problems.
And then if you go into the World Health Organization website,
you'll see that across the globe, you have this problem of heavy burden of chronic
disease, and healthcare systems being overwhelmed by it.
So wherever you are, health coaches on the planet, this course has been designed fairly generically.

(11:53):
It says U.S. this and U.S. that when we're citing examples of healthcare systems.
So it's kind of up to you where you live to look at your own regulations and
your own healthcare system, but the problems are gonna be the same.
And what you learn in this course will be transferable to your country.
Maybe with one or two little exceptions of details, but generally you'll have

(12:16):
the tools that you need to work in a healthcare system.
Yes. Yeah. So logistically, there might be some tweaks here or there,
depending on where you live.
But yeah, but if we zoom out and just look at the problem globally,
it's we can call it pretty universal. Yeah.
So like I'm Canadian as well, as you know, Judy. And, you know,

(12:37):
so the statistic in the CDC statistic for metabolic syndrome is like 88 percent
of Americans are metabolically unwell.
That probably tracks to Canada. It's not that different. Canada is probably very much the same.
Yeah, it probably tracks. Yeah. Yeah. So UK and the UK.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think what's important there is that, okay,
wherever you live, this is, you know, that the chronic, the burden of chronic

(12:57):
health illness is probably terrible.
Yeah. And also the medical system set up in a way to not, to not support it
or, or, or turn the clocks back on it.
So that we have a sort of our baseline level of understanding any specific logistics
that are pertinent to your country or region, please understand those.
So the course that you built for us is,

(13:18):
coaching in a medical practice, health coaching in a medical practice,
absolutely uniquely qualified to write this course, because everything you just
told us, you started as a nurse,
were frustrated by the fact that doctors were not connected enough to these
patients, but nurses were. So there was a miscommunication there.
You know, your experience from conventional medicine to integrative medicine,
and then deciding, you know, deciding health coaching is the thing you've really

(13:41):
been through every arm of the medical system.
Them yeah um so we came out on top
came out and came out and you're not even jaded and
you came out oh well but what
i'm getting at is yeah yeah so the course you built for us that was extremely
actionable it's it's it's um non-dogmatic non-judgmental we're not going to

(14:04):
come down on doctors we're not going to be anti-establishment that's not they
need our help that's right Right. Exactly. So we want to help. Okay.
So now I know Laura talks every day to people who are trying to exit the healthcare
system, like nurses that are like, I got to get out of here.
Same as your experience, Judy.

(14:25):
So I don't know, maybe my question is for both of you, like,
who do you see really, what kind of health coach, what kind of person would
be great for tackling this course and tackling this branch of health coaching.
Do I need to speak to that or Laura, do you want to? Yeah, you go ahead and I'll add my two cents.
Right, because you did ask me a question a month or so ago about a nurse who

(14:49):
was asking you a question.
And I'll say this because having been a nurse and this course
is designed for people who need
to get indoctrinated into
the healthcare system with the language and the standards and the behaviors
and the ethics and all of that that they may not have in order to go into the

(15:12):
health care system and fit in and do everything correctly and know what they're
doing and have that confidence.
Nurses already have that because they've been in the system.
So nurses would need to do a health coaching certification and maybe the board
certification as well so that they can bill for their services, right? Right.

(15:34):
But this course is for people who really haven't had training in health care
because we're giving them that the core competencies that they need to work
in the health care system.
Does that make sense? You know what I mean? That is really important.
Let's let's like highlight that, because if you haven't been in the health care
system, we can't just barrel in there, you know, ranting and raving about the

(15:58):
problems with the health care system. Oh, no, no.
No, I don't think that's the right attitude to have. You may be,
you know, you may have some frustration and some disappointment.
Most people do.
And the people working in the system as well. It's not just the patients.
But, you know, one of the reasons that we're going to jump around a little bit

(16:18):
here, but there is health reform underway in most of the countries that I looked
at, particularly in the US and to some extent, Canada and the UK.
Yes. And the NHS and the UK.
Yes. And they all point to the same thing. Patient-centered care,
because patients have been dissatisfied with care over the years,
and it's gotten worse and worse. Patient outcomes have gotten worse and worse.

(16:41):
So they want to improve patient health outcomes.
They want to improve population health. And they want to reduce costs.
And health coaching has been proven in scientific studies to improve all of
the aims of health care reforms.
So health coaches are being invited into the health care system now in droves.

(17:04):
They're trying to find places for them and hiring. There are jobs in hospitals.
There are jobs in managed care organizations in the States. There are jobs on apps.
You can get a job with a health coaching or health care app where you support people on the app.
You don't even have to leave your house. There's a huge one in the UK that's

(17:26):
headquartered in Berlin and also has a headquarters in Copenhagen.
So all of those countries.
So it's all coming. It just depends now on where you as individual health coaches
want to work, where you feel that you want to work, what patients you want to coach.

(17:48):
And I think that's really important because you're going to have opportunities
everywhere and it'll be the qualifications you need will be a little bit different.
Yeah so if you're going to work at home in your
um entrepreneurial uh health health
coaching independent practice and and and
request to get um referrals from physicians you're going to have to do a bit

(18:09):
of marketing there and you may not need a certification you know but i think
you'll have to record your sessions in the electronic medical record and things
like that so you may need a certification to do that.
But if you're going into a hospital and you're going to work face-to-face with
patients and work on a team with other healthcare providers and with doctors,

(18:30):
you'll need some sort of certification to get higher.
Absolutely. Yeah. This is what I keep talking to people that are interested
in going into this realm and they're asking about jobs and where the employment opportunities are.
I highly, highly recommend they take our path to get you board certified.
It will open up so many more opportunities.

(18:51):
You don't have to have it. You will find employers, particularly smaller practices
that really want that aren't going to have that concern.
But large hospitals, insurance companies, the VA, they're going to want that
national board certification if you are not already a nurse or an RD.
And sometimes they want both, right?
So some of the positions I'm like, ooh, that one's paying 125 grand a year.

(19:12):
What do you need for that one?
They want you to be national board certified and a nurse or national board certified
and a therapist or something like that.
But what I will tell you is I do think we're going to continue to see these
incomes grow as the efficacy of a great coach working with people continues
to improve outcomes, right?
Outcomes and costs, as their costs go down, the value of their health coaches is going to go up.

(19:36):
And so I think the benefit of this additional course is exactly what you said, Judith, on two tracks.
So first of all, for those that have never really come up in the healthcare
system, it truly is a different language.
When I, as a health coach, come in and I try to talk in health coach language,
a lot of this does not track with the terminology and the language that's often

(19:58):
used with medical professionals.
But also, if I were thinking in terms of a nurse coming up in this health care
system, trying to change gears from being a nurse to being a health coach, it's a different role.
And so a lot of what we're going to be addressing in here, too,
is how to do that, right? Right.
And not just switch goals, but actually build a program and implement a program

(20:19):
within a medical practice.
So I think this will be beneficial for folks regardless of your background.
But I don't want people who've never stepped foot in a medical institution or
never worked in that space to be afraid of reaching out because we need so much
more. To your point, things are changing.
You know, to quote, I think it's Wayne Gretzky. You know, you got to go where

(20:41):
the puck is heading, not where the puck is now.
Where's the puck heading? And that's where I personally think that the rate of growth.
So we will always continue to see health coaching grow broadly,
regardless of the direction you want to go.
But I think the rate of growth is going to grow faster in corporate wellness and medicine.
Those two places. So let's go where the puck is, where the puck is going.

(21:03):
Yeah, I've got a couple of questions here. So I'm just going to make something
clear, because I do see a question about CPT coding.
Right now, health coaching has a CPT category three code.
Which means that it's under, they're watching it,
it's an experimental or an emerging technology,

(21:26):
that's the category so it's being uh assessed
right now and monitored for about for its value and effectiveness
or efficacy so it may be two years
that started in 2020 by the way so it's usually about five years before they
grant it category one so anybody that's here that's in the medical somebody
here looks like they really know um about medical terminology and medical billing

(21:49):
um it may be quicker yeah that they that they grant it category one because
once you get category one,
you can bill for your services and be paid by insurance companies.
I did read that there are some insurance companies, it depends on the company,
will actually reimburse people who do have a CPT category three.
So it is possible that some patients will be able to get the health coach will

(22:14):
be able to be reimbursed.
So it's always worth asking and submitting an invoice. voice,
but right now we're still at CPT code category three. Yeah.
Not reimbursable. And the other piece of that that's attached to that is the
healthcare system is obsessed with certifications and licensure.

(22:34):
So all of the other healthcare professionals that you'll be working with inside
the four walls of the institutions and the hospitals will be licensed one way
or another. and the licensure that they've deemed.
Acceptable for health coaches is the board certification. So the board certification
and the ability to bill insurance go hand in hand.

(22:56):
You have to have that certification.
Now nurses, nurses and say physios and other healthcare, occupational therapists,
whatever, if they decide to become health coaches as well, it's up to their
individual institution to create,
the definition of their job and decide whether or not they need that extra health

(23:19):
coaching board certification on top of their nursing or their licensure in the other room.
But what I see, I'm sorry to go on and on about this, but it's just, it's a huge thing.
What I see from.
The studies that doctors have done in the States and also in the National Health
service in the UK is that they're so excited by health coaching and the idea

(23:43):
of how it's going to help people.
Someone's a nurse or a physician or otherwise a healthcare professional.
They send them on a weekend course and they teach them a few health coaching
approaches, questions to ask and active listening, but they have literally a weekend course.
And then they send them back and then they send them in to be health coaches.

(24:04):
This is interesting because, okay, so this is awesome. Thank you for clarifying that.
So what What we know is that the CPT code is not an active, reimbursable one yet.
Currently, they're just keeping an eye on health coaching.
So these codes are being plugged in from the perspective of tracking the data.
Being plugged in is important so they can follow it. Great.
But what you're saying is that if and when it gets upgraded to this Category

(24:28):
1, the CPT code has to coexist with some kind of...
License or certification that is recognized so that
would that would be the nbhwc credential yes that's what
it is yeah yeah and then there's another body called
the uh it's a health education body council it's a health health education is

(24:49):
and there's two bodies that they'll accept certification yeah but if you're
already licensed if you're a nurse practitioner nurse doctor you already have
the licensure that's needed you could take a weekend health
coaching course and that would satisfy them. And then you're a health coach as far as right now.
That's good clarification.

(25:09):
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They may just have a different way of getting there than men do.
With the Primal Health Coach Institute's Strength Training for Women Specialist
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(25:31):
questions, and goals most relevant to women.
You'll learn how to design a training program, and then you'll develop one.
You'll also learn how to co-create individual eating strategies for clients
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(25:51):
If you want to empower women to become fitter and stronger, then visit PrimalHealthCoach.com
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Because here's my observation. So I've told this story before.
When I found myself knocked up with twins in my 40s, I'm clearly a high-risk

(26:13):
patient to UnitedHealthcare, which was my insurance carrier at the time.
I was over 40, and I'm having multiples. principles.
And I was assigned essentially a health coach to basically call me every month
to just see how I was doing. Do I feel safe?
Am I doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So health insurance companies
have realized the benefit of
having somebody kind of tracking with each patient and are they compliant?

(26:35):
Are they doing this? But they're calling it health coaching.
I'm like, that is not health coaching. That's not health coaching.
They're trying to apply the same public health, like from the top down approach
for a situation and problems that that are very individualized.
So the whole like weekend course thing is they're going to figure it out. I'm sure they are.
And the fact that I do agree, I think we may see that CPT code upgraded to one

(26:58):
a little sooner than five years because the CDC has bought into it.
They have issued a grant to the national board for a group health coaching program
for type two diabetes and insulin resistance.
So I think we're going to see this come to fruition guys.
Let's be where the puck is going. Oh my gosh. We got to learn to speak the language.
Yeah. So I want to start, that's a couple of questions that have come in and

(27:19):
this one's a really good one from Michelle. Where is it?
She was asking they, meaning doctors need our help. So this was from earlier.
Can you please expand on that?
And also would it be billable, which we've already answered that I think in
terms of billability is coming.
There may be people, I think, depending on their insurance carrier might be
able to do like flexible spending or something if the carrier allows always,

(27:42):
I think the patient needs to check with their insurance company.
Yeah. But in terms of what do you mean by doctors need our help?
Me? Yes. Okay. So I just, I lost the train there of the question that you were
asking, but that's the question you're asking.
Well, physicians are completely overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed.

(28:03):
And I think it's fair to say, and I did it for 20 years and I know what my friends
were saying, and it didn't matter whether they were integrative medicine,
trying to spend more time with patients.
Like I tried to spend more time with people and, you know, it was very frustrating,
but everybody, every doctor wants to be able to spend more time with patients
and they just can't, they're just driven by this.

(28:25):
You've got to see a certain number of patients per day. You have to bill a certain amount.
And you know, you're just the minute the patient walks in the door,
you're thinking what's the quickest way to get this person out so I can get the next person in.
And some, some doctors are a little bit more, you
know I don't know what the word is like
just driven to do that than others so those

(28:48):
of us are that like to spend more time with people
and really get to the root of the problem instead of just writing
a prescription or send them for a blood test it's equally
as frustrating as the doctors who are really trying to push through lots and
lots of people so so doctors need help um because patients aren't happy with
the care they're getting and they're giving that feedback to the people the

(29:11):
quality improvement departments that are in almost every practice now,
because quality improvement means you monitor the practice and you monitor the
financials, but you also monitor patient outcomes and you monitor whether they're happy or not.
And they're bad. They know the reports aren't good.
People aren't happy, the outcomes aren't good, and it's costing too much.

(29:32):
So doctors can't do that work on their own.
And they aren't trained in lifestyle medicine, unless they go back and get extra
training like I did afterwards. And I was into it myself.
But they're not trained in medical schools, they don't know how to do it.
And chronic diseases are lifestyle diseases, the diseases of poor lifestyle.

(29:54):
So that's the bottom line right there. Doctors need the help.
Patients need the help because they're not happy. And they're not getting somebody
that's there to support them. and, you know, on the other end of a phone if they need help.
And the practices need health coaches because they help to reduce costs.

(30:15):
Sometimes I think having a nihilistic point of view is helpful.
What I mean by this is it's like, look, we're probably not going to change the
fact that a doctor has 10 to 15 minutes with you.
We're probably not going to overhaul that anytime soon.
But you don't have to if you have a health coach because they take over.
Exactly. So the good news is that's okay.

(30:37):
We got you, doctors. So, you know, there's one part in the course that you share,
and I really enjoyed this.
You walk through, the patient walks in the door, they approach the desk,
they give their name to the receptionist that, that, that, that now you're plugged into the system.
The nurse comes and grabs you, gets your vital. Doctor gets pinged that you're here.

(30:57):
You have 10 minutes because he's got the next, you know, like you walked through
what's happening like behind the scenes, this little hive of activity that I
think, I don't think the patient is even really privy to.
And I was never privy to, cause I've never been sick, really.
I've never really had to get into the healthcare system. Thank goodness.
But it was just like, wow, what like literal hive of activity.
And this patient is, is some ends up kind of simply being codes that are then

(31:22):
punched into the forms and you're off. Right.
Really, really not a client centered, patient centered approach at all.
And so that's where patients are probably feeling very sort of. yeah
like a number like like yeah like cattle right but but
again the the the health care system is probably not going
to change it's probably not going to change anytime soon where the doctor has more than

(31:44):
15 minutes but that's where we come in and i think that's a really good pitch
point because doctors need our help they're frustrated by this experience just
as much as patients are yeah so it feels like that's a leverage point for any
health coach coming into a practice to pitch that's one thing you talked one
thing you talked about that i loved is you he said,
before you go into a medical practice, you have to speak their language.

(32:06):
You have to understand how they chart, how you can't just go in rogue.
You have to fall in line with the system. So we're going to teach people how to do that.
And I know I'm kind of jumping the gun here, but.
This is actually curriculum in the course as well, but just quick hits from
the perspective of a health coach who wants to do this.
What competencies should they have and or how should they pitch themselves?

(32:32):
What are some of the quick hits? Like, if you want to do this,
here's how to get yourself and your foot in the door of a clinic.
Okay. So those are two different sort of things a little bit.
So the core competencies, I can run through them right now and list them.
So you have sort of your arms around that.

(32:52):
I firmly believe that a health coach needs to decide what the best scenario
for him or herself, use him and her or themselves, is. Like, what do you want to do?
Do you have a life experience in your family or with yourself with a particular
disease that you're very interested in, that you have knowledge of?

(33:14):
Do you speak a couple of different languages? So you're from a particular culture
where there's lots of people that are similar to you in your community,
because we know that that's very helpful if a health coach is as similar to a patient as possible.
Everybody gets along better and the patients do better. So is there a niche
that you fit into that you want to work in?

(33:35):
And then go there and see if when you present yourself and you talk about your
qualifications and what you want to do, if it doesn't just hit home with them,
right? Right. That's one thing.
The other thing is that these core competencies that we have are pretty dry.

(33:55):
You know, it's pretty dry stuff, but it is stuff that you have to sort of know
to work and fit in in the health care system.
So you're all speaking the same language around the table and that probably so that you'll get a job.
So um so the first core competence these these nine core competencies were deemed by the

(34:16):
institute of medicine to be what help the core competencies that health coach
that health professionals need to work in the health care system okay so if
you look at other medical bodies and government bodies you'll see other competencies
but they'll be basically the same as this.
There may be fewer or more, but this encompasses all of them.

(34:39):
Okay. So the first, the first one in the United States is a basic understanding
of the US healthcare system, which is a juggernaut.
But the reason to understand it is to understand what has not been working,
and where the new models of care and the new healthcare trends and reforms are going.
And then where does health coaching fit into that?

(35:02):
And I explained to you that it fits in because health coaching has been shown
to help the triple aim of the health care reform in the three aims that we talked about.
Patient-centered care and effective patient-centered communication is the second.
Patient-centered care is basically global now. Now, they want patients to take

(35:28):
more interest and engagement in their own care.
Instead of the doctors just telling them what to do and the patient goes home
and doesn't do any of the things that's been prescribed or been recommended.
The patients are now part of the team and they're helping to make decisions
about their own health care.
So the health coach needs to be needs to be on the dean to educate the patients

(35:51):
to support them in self-management because the health care system can't manage
people is too much and um and to and to be there to help you know uh support
them in their goals setting their goals for for health,
and uh and in some cases when you work for the health care system when you work

(36:11):
for an institution you're actually helping to navigate and guide the patients through the system.
Yes. Advocating, helping. Yes.
You touched on this a second ago, which I think is really cool.
So we're talking about the healthcare reform.
And one of the objectives is let's put some of this, these behaviors of self-management
into the patient's hands.

(36:32):
So make sure the patient goes home knowing what they need to do and how to do it.
And so the outcome, and so now I'm going to zoom out, the outcome of a health
coaching conversation,
whether you're in the health healthcare system or not, what Ina teaches in our
master coach course, we teach this in the main certification course,
the outcome of every health coaching course is that we deliver the client to self-efficacy.
The belief that they know what to do, they have the resources and or can track

(36:56):
down the resources and the support to do it themselves, this autonomy,
self-efficacy, that is the outcome of every health coaching relationship, period.
And so that specifically speaks to what you said, which is the health coaches
there needs to be on the team to support the patient in their self-management.
Now we have an empowered patient who can proceed effectively.

(37:19):
And extract themselves from the cycle of this healthcare system. Yeah.
And health coaches, we double down. That sentence that you just said,
my program has prepared me to graduate people from my health coaching programs with them.
Exactly. As self-efficacious or engaged, activated patients.

(37:41):
Right. They'll love it. They'll love it. Yeah. Because this triple aim is perpetrated
all through the whole healthcare system.
So that language, they understand and they'll understand that.
Right. So if you're pitching yourself, we're using the word pitch.
I don't know if it's the right word. Yeah. You know, yeah. Market.
It's still kind of commerce-y sounding. It kind of is. It kind of is.

(38:04):
But that would be a message to double down on.
And in fact, if we even pull the curtain back more, it's like,
as a health coach, do you feel confident that you have an approach that will
deliver a client to self-efficacy because that's actually what the healthcare
system wants and needs from you.
Yes. Well, it's funny you should say that.
I'm just going to run through these competencies because each chapter of our

(38:26):
course is built around one or two or three of the competencies, right?
And what you just said about program planning, program planning is our chapter
four, evidence based, I'm going to jump to something else now that the medical
system is nuts about is, you know, for good reason.
Is evidence-based everything, evidence-based practices that your coaching practices

(38:48):
have to have some evidence behind them.
Your program has to be sort of evidence-based. Does it work? Has it been proven?
So your evidence-based programming.
Um, that, that you go into market to whoever you're going to work,
uh, with, or you hope to work with has to have sort of that evidence-based stamp on it.

(39:11):
So in our chapter four, we've, uh, we've sort of built a template that automatically
is an evidence-based template with health confidence as the outcome and health
confidence is health efficacy.
Um, patient has self-management skills has been educated.

(39:32):
So there's a little definition of health confidence, their health literacy,
it means that the patient is interested, activated and understands how to get
the information they need to help themselves.
So that is our main goal. And it's, it's a generic health coaching program where

(39:52):
the patient's goals then get slotted in as short term goals.
So the patient has their own goals. The physician has their goals for the patient's
disease management, but they all go into the goals that the patient sets to
work with you weekly or every second week.
So that's the patient outcome, but it all works towards greater health confidence
and greater health confidence has been shown to hit all those triple.

(40:15):
And it gives me chills, right? Because, because, you know, help greater health
confidence in patients, better patient outcomes, better population health outcomes,
happier patients, and lower costs.
You know, so that's the program. So if you have a program, and that's the template
that we provide in our course, you can slot in your own methods and your own

(40:38):
goals with your patients.
But health confidence is the outcome. So if you go into a practice and say,
I can graduate, your patients will have greater health confidence.
Wow. And it's in the UK. Health confidence is a thing in the UK.
It's in the US and in Canada. So people understand this.
When I discovered it, I was like, okay, this is going to be our outcome goal

(41:00):
for our template program, right?
And, yeah. That's amazing. I mean, I got excited and lost my train.
But it was programming. When you said about the programming and the marketing,
Thank you for listening.
I think that this particular course that we've got here will give our health

(41:23):
coaches to take the course, those kinds of tools to take into practice.
So this is a great segue into a question that came in from Tracy.
So Tracy is an emergency medical physician assistant, and she also did Andy
Weill's program as a functional medicine certified as a PA.
Also a primal health coach, but she hasn't started practicing.
Yeah. She says, she says, what I'd like to be as a health coach with a functional

(41:46):
medicine provider, right.
Not, um, but do not know how to start and what exactly does a health coach in
a functional medicine practice do?
So I think that what you just said was kind of like this broad message that
the outcome goal for a health coach, certainly within any medical practice,
but certainly within the functional medicine practice too,
is this idea of health confidence and self efficacy, and empowerment at the end of that program.

(42:11):
So can you provide maybe some, I guess, a little more detail there in kind of
how something like this might flow within a medical practice,
understanding the health coach's role and where this could possibly be taking place? Okay.
Yeah. So to Tracy's question, there are
models of medical practices within the

(42:34):
healthcare care system and the physicians of
functional medicine docs integrative integrative medicine
docs are a little bit different in that you know like i did i was i was still
conventional i've taken i've taken some training in functional medicine as well
love it but a lot of functional medicine docs are it can be chiropractors they
can be osteopaths they can be um i think physicians Physicians,

(42:58):
not sure if there's another sort of, I think in the States,
those are the ones that can call themselves doctor.
I think there's some nutritionists who actually have, who do functional medicine
have clinics. But my point is that they're private pay.
Okay. So they're not necessarily covered by insurance, although there may be

(43:20):
some insurance coverage for some of the things that they do.
These are generally private clinics. the patients then understand,
who come to these clinics may tend to be a little bit more already self-confident,
self-confident and health confident because they're motivated to seek out functional

(43:42):
medicine as opposed to the conventional.
Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. So, so these people that are in functional
medicine clinics may have more money to spend.
So it may not matter if you're board certified to work in that clinic because
you won't be billing insurance anyway.
Although it depends on who owns the clinic, whether or not they want you to be certified.

(44:05):
It depends on the physician's own approach, because they'll have education in lifestyle medicine.
So they'll have their own approach to what diet they prefer,
what programs they want to do.
And so you may actually end up sort of delivering their programs,
because a lot of health coaches just now we've spoken

(44:25):
to for this for developing this course uh we're
working already in functional medicine or
with physicians who are uh sort of out of the medicare system definitely and
out of insurance altogether and just billing patients and spending more time
with them and you know just billing patients as they go so in that case you

(44:47):
may actually not not be billing insurance insurance,
you'd either be getting paid by the practice or you'd be taking the patients
on referral and, you know, billing them yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's what it might look like. And these tend to be,
and I'll just wrap up by saying that these tend to be health coach friendly
practices, and it might be a good place to start.

(45:07):
Yeah. You know, we talked about that, didn't we? Yeah.
Yeah. That's good. That's helpful. That's actually a really helpful distinction
between what it'd be like in a functional medicine clinic versus a conventional
healthcare system sort of scenario.
Really good points. You know, a client who's opting into this concierge service
is, is maybe more literate or confident in their health and they have the resources.

(45:32):
So it is different. I think, so I think, you know, we've talked to a lot of
we've talked to a lot of folks who run functional medicine, integrative medicine
clinics on the podcast, and we've seen it happen both ways where we've seen
it happen, where the doctor, um,
is the first point of contact with the patient and says, okay,
this is what, this is our, you know, our outcome goal for you.
I'm going to have the health coach work on this bit with you.

(45:52):
I'm going to get you set up with them.
We've also seen it the other way around where the health coach is the first point of contact. Yeah.
And the patient comes in with, or the client comes in with, you know,
their big, big health goals, their vision of their health and the health coach
says, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to work on this with you and we're going
to get you set up with the doctor for all this stuff.
So either way, but it's it's a pretty cool, pretty cool um setup functional

(46:14):
medicine clinic would be that deal but you also made a good point which is if
you go into a functional medicine clinic they may or may not um be a primarily aligned.
Practice so just know that yeah so
if you're so for to tracy's question you know i think
that she should sort of uh tracy you're
listening i think you a good idea for you would be

(46:36):
just to find clinics that are in your area
or you know that maybe online there's
a job online you could get yeah and uh you know
if it jives with the way that you practice and you're a good
match with with the clinic i'm sure you could get a job i would be willing to
stick my neck out and say that i think most functional medicine and integrative

(46:56):
medicine clinics that are private in in the u.s and maybe in canada but maybe
not yet um are hiring or albert have already got health health coaches on staff.
So it shouldn't be a problem.
Noah's pivoting to more of the conventional traditional.
He's asking, do you feel like health coaches operating in the traditional medical

(47:17):
system have a different set of challenges than those operating independently?
Are they more restricted in their ability to make a difference?
So I'd love your take on this. I have some other, my two cents on that.
I'm sure Aaron does too, but what's your initial? Yeah.
So I hope that... I would hope not.
Because everything is relative in the way that you make a difference.

(47:40):
So if you're working with patients who we haven't even touched on social,
like I got, I sort of went halfway through the competencies here and cultural
competence and socioeconomic understanding,
socioeconomic, social determinants of health, and how people who are being looked
looked after by like government insurance, like Medicare, Medicaid, NHS,

(48:03):
who don't have great resources, who may have mental health issues and who are also sick.
You know, yes, you would be restricted when you go to work in a hospital,
you're restricted by all kinds of regulations and you don't have somebody looking
over your shoulder and breathing down your neck the whole time.
So you may not be able to recommend a primal diet, for example.

(48:24):
Example, that's another whole section of the course that we said,
look, here's how you work within regulations.
If you're going to do evidence-based lifestyle recommendations,
they would have to be sort of CDC, US diet regulations.
And you'll look at them and go, oh my God. But they're very general.
I've looked at them and you can work within them and make it work based on how you're a patient.

(48:49):
What your patient wants, it's about patient-centered care. How does your patient
want to eat? What is your patient comfortable eating?
And then you're going to coach the patient about the healthy way to do that.
Okay. And if you can really make somebody feel better, if you make your patients
feel better, because your recommendations are helping them just navigate whatever

(49:11):
challenges they have, that's huge.
Yeah. You know, even if you've got some, excuse me, idiot,
breathing down your neck and telling this rule and that
rule and this hospitals are run on rules yeah so
so yes you'll be restricted a bit but you'll
be able to make such a huge difference exactly i i
like that message and you know i teach that in our master coach course because because

(49:33):
our master coach course is the course that satisfies this nbhwc
education requirement so anybody who is looking to be become a board certified
health coach for all these reasons we've mentioned here that would be the educational
track you'd need to take and i'm yeah it's equal i'm i'm obligated to teach
the CDC-oriented approach to diet, nutrition, lifestyle.

(49:55):
Cholesterol, you know, all of that stuff.
We are obligated to teach it because this is a national board-qualified course.
And I always tell my students in that course, we need to know this.
We need to know what our clients have been taught their whole lives and what
the hospitals are going to double down on. We need to know that with no judgment

(50:16):
and with dialing back the dogma of what we believe.
Literally meet the client where they are, which is they believe that the food
pyramid's good and what have you.
You know, for example, an example that comes to mind is that,
you know, in the primal approach, one of the first things we would ask people
to do is eliminate grains.
A lot of people aren't ready to do that. In my private practice,

(50:38):
a lot of clients aren't ready to do that. So we don't. So we don't.
Nobody's yoinked away my primal card yet because I'm not making my clients give
up grains. They're not ready for that yet.
There's a hundred other things. things other dials we
can turn that are going to make massive impact on these
people and that's the client-centered approach yeah yeah it's true
it's the client-centered approach you got to meet them where they are and that's

(51:00):
what the health care system hasn't done for people and uh patients patients
really really appreciate it and they react really well to it so the message
is you can make a difference you can make such a difference for people yeah
the larger the system the more constrained you're going to feel, I would imagine, right?
So it may be a little bit easier to get your foot in the door with a small private

(51:23):
practice, although those seem to be disappearing by the day,
right? They're all getting bought up.
However, they all still have the same problem. A lot of these larger,
what were once small practices that are now larger conglomerates,
they're still trying to get costs down, you know?
So it's an approach to go in there and sort of working within that practice

(51:45):
to kind of help improve the overall efficacy and cost and client outcomes.
I think that message is exactly the same, but here's the thing,
like, especially for people that live in tougher States, like I used to live in Illinois.
I wasn't giving quote unquote diet advice anyway.
You know, I was having a conversation and, and, you know, if you just sort of
lead with a nutrient dense whole food diet comprised of local foods that are

(52:10):
in season, I don't know any medical professional that would be like,
that sounds crazy, you know?
And to Aaron's point, for some people, if that still means whole grain pasta,
whatever, however they design that and what they're ready for,
it's a better starting plate than Wendy's, right? Or down there in the port
of Chick-fil-A, whatever it is.
So it's starting kind of where your client is now, but the larger the institution

(52:32):
you try to crack, the more sort of constrained range you're going to be in your approach.
So in some respects, it might help to kind of start and get your feet wet with
a smaller practice. If you can find one.
I remember when I made this shift professionally, my regular MD,
normal conventional medical doctor, when he was like, God, I haven't seen you

(52:52):
in years. I used to see you like all the time.
I haven't seen you in a long time. What's going on? I, you know,
we had 15 minutes and I really wasn't sick.
I just needed blood work. So So we had a chat, you know, and it was,
I was telling him about this, which I made. And he said, so wait a minute. So.
If you actually give someone like a framework and provide advice and recommendations,

(53:13):
what have you, they'll actually do it.
Like he was dumbfounded by that. And what I said was, look, by the time someone's
ready to come work with me and pay out of pocket. Exactly.
Yeah. They're willing to kind of do things on their own here.
And he's like, wow, give me your card because I've got people I can refer.
There you go. You just pitched.

(53:34):
Exactly. By the time they're willing to come pay money out of pocket to see
me, yes, they're going to do the work they need to do.
And it's not necessarily my rules, to Aaron's point, right?
And look, in the beginning, did I start that way as a new coach?
Hell yeah, I did. I started out kind of like, you need to do this.
And here's all this education.
Now that you have all this amazing information, let's do it.

(53:57):
And then dumbfounded why my clients couldn't do these eight things that were
horrifically complicated for them, totally upended their lives,
even though they had all the right information.
So rewind, you know, it, it, I learned quickly that that doesn't work and really
had to lean into just the coaching chops, you know, in dealing with just what's
the one step that you're capable of doing today.

(54:19):
But I will tell you, even in traditional medical practices, if it's not that
they are set up to actually bring you on as an employee, there's a willingness
there to refer, um, for clients that are willing to just pay out of packet.
You know um we've seen that let me just tell
you i just i read if i can just interrupt for two seconds i read
i read something um just recently well in

(54:41):
the last couple of days i was finishing up one of the chapters is um studies
have shown that patients who are referred for health coaching do better with
their results of their patient engagement and confidence than patients who who
aren't so there's a thing about paying and there's a thing about being referred by your doctor.
But on the other hand, you'll get some patients who've been in the sick role.

(55:03):
And the sick role is they're older and sicker, and they've always been looked
after by their doctor. And they've always been told what to do by their doctor.
And they have no confidence whatsoever to make decisions for themselves.
And they may be a bit more of a challenge. They may or may not be.
Well, I'm sure everybody's coachable, but they may be a little more difficult
to get to take responsibility for their health because they never have.

(55:27):
You will get those if you work in the system. You will. That's a stage of change thing, right?
That was my mom who was very, very trusting of her doctor, even though the doctor
was giving her no, the medical systems are giving her no relief of her symptoms
and honestly co-prescribing opioids that she had never been prescribed.
You'll get those. Yeah. Yeah.

(55:47):
But, but, you know, I just had this, this is an anecdote, but I,
I've been ranting and raving about the drug Ozempic on my Instagram stories
lately, not to get into the weeds of Ozempic, but because it's being used by people,
by celebrities and influence. Oh, there's another one now they're injecting a newer one.
Oh, is it? Okay. So this is a diabetes drug.

(56:09):
It's a diabetes drug, but if you're rich enough and you have access to it, you can lose weight.
And so, so in a manner of speaking, speaking Ozempic is kind of masking or kind
of solving for the symptoms of insulin resistance, which is what I help my clients with.
So it's like, and I was talking about it, like, you know, when I was insulin
resistant, I would have killed for a pill, you know, it'd been great to have
something, but I didn't. So I did it myself.

(56:30):
And I got so much grief in my comments from health coaches who couldn't believe
that I wasn't more pissed off.
And I said, look, the people who are going to take Ozempic are going to take
Ozempic. They're not going to work with me. They're not in that stage of change.
And so that's sort of what I think what you're referring to is that there's
some people in the medical system who are in the medical system and they're,

(56:52):
they're probably not going to be our, our audience, but, but more and more and
more, I believe health consumers are becoming more empowered or curious,
curious, like maybe there's another way out of here.
And so that's the opportunities are growing for health coaches. Yeah.
So, so Todd had made a comment here about the sense of superiority in the medical,
but, but it also comes across in health coaching, right.

(57:15):
That, that were some judgmental of people that, you know, aren't making these
right choices and what have you.
And he's saying, you know, I really want to start with the patient and be where
they are. And you're absolutely right, Todd.
Um, and he says, I also want to start where the doctors are.
How can I help both? I don't want to read your educate to either.
I just thought that was such a great comment because there is a lot of superiority

(57:37):
in terms of just do it yourself.
And, you know, here's all the information you need. I'm going going to give
you this, this diet or this strategy.
And you're, you're not compliant with the health coach somehow.
Like, no, that's not what health coaching is about. Right.
Yeah. So I would love your, your kind of two cents on his questions here is
how can, how can he help? So Todd, a great way to start where the doctors are is offer them a free.

(58:00):
Coaching session or a free develop a
doctor package they need it they need it so badly you
know um some doctors are runners or they do this or
that but none of them have time there's so many overweight sick doctors out
there smokers and they're just if you go in there with hey listen this is what
i do would you like my you know a snippet like a six-week program just give

(58:22):
them a freebie yeah demonstrate demonstrate what it's like so they'll know what it's what it's all
about so that's one of the suggestions we make in marketing that'd
be great idea you're going to get doctors who
are just on their high horse who are you know just
tunnel vision and it
may not be the right practice for you i mean it just you'll go in there and

(58:43):
they may talk down to you or you know whatever as a nurse i can tell you it's
just they learn it in medical school so so you may just find you know what i
don't want to work in this environment but you know you
may actually be able to turn somebody around, have a really good experience.
So I'm going to quickly, for two seconds, just finish these competencies.

(59:04):
It'll help you understand that there are different niches. There are so many
different niches for health coaches.
You can seriously basically write your own ticket right now,
decide what it is you want to do.
When you go through this course, you'll get all the options and you'll have
an idea of what's out there.
Or just do your own online searches or whatever to find out in your community

(59:26):
what's out there and decide where it is you'd like to work.
So I got to chronic disease and the social determinants of health is core competency
number three after patient-centered care and communication.
Cultural competence is four. It's a little bit separate from racial or poverty

(59:46):
groups, lower economic groups.
Cultural competence is understanding and being open to being curious about somebody's
differing background, their beliefs.
They may have different belief systems around medical care, what it means to
be sick, how to talk to doctors.

(01:00:07):
So it's a lot of openness and active listening and a lot of questioning and
not jumping to conclusions about people.
Ethics and professionalism, so you have to learn medical ethics.
So tried really hard to make that as brief and understandable as possible. It's a very dry subject.

(01:00:29):
And then acting professionally with your colleagues and with your patients.
So there are some rules and regulations you need to know there.
Working on teams. So working in interdisciplinary teams is part of health care reform.
So you're going to have teams of, like a patient will have a care team.
It'll have a physician. It will
probably have a nurse manager or somebody who's the team, runs the team.

(01:00:51):
And then there'll be whatever other nutritionist, whoever else needs to be on
the team for that particular patient and the health coach.
And it might just be you and the doctor. So if you're in a smaller practice,
it might just be a team list.
It'll be you and the physician and the receptionist who makes the calls and
calls the patient in and sends the requisitions off and does that sort of thing.

(01:01:14):
Or it could be a larger team. team coordinated care
is a very specific type of care for patients who
have two or three or four chronic diseases and are
mentally ill and have no resources and
are very complicated okay very complex patient now those teams exist in institutions

(01:01:35):
and probably want a special coordinated care provider certification which is
going to be a bit more than what we provide here I mean, there are colleges that have,
I think it's called CCP, chronic care provider.
So it's a health coach, but they've got this extra training to be on these coordinated care teams.

(01:01:55):
You might get hired. You might get hired to be on one, but they want a really
good knowledge of chronic disease like diabetes and heart disease.
Community orientation means that once you discharge a patient from care,
you can help them get the support in the community that they need,
of the services in the community to keep them, support them outside the four walls of the system.

(01:02:16):
The importance of quality improvement, so you understand that everything gets
monitored for efficacy and cost.
In the system, even in small practices. And then information technology,
documentation and confidentiality.
So you have to know, sort of be open to learning the technology.
You're going to communicate with the patient via portal, how to document.

(01:02:38):
So we go into a fair bit of detail about how you write your notes and patient
confidentiality, which is protected by law, which is really,
really, really important.
What to divulge to whom and when, right? That's great.
Yeah. So those are the competencies that have been deemed important.
And our chapters go through each competency and we've built the chapters around them.

(01:03:02):
And we tried to give you a really good idea about sort of the competencies are chapters one to five.
And then chapter six is just a compilation of resources and practical advice
and insider tips that I can remember that from nursing and physician standpoint,
point that that'll help you sort of get in there break the ice and scripts what

(01:03:26):
to say when you call a cold call
uh what to say to doctors how to talk to doctors how to be you know in.
Sort of a health care team what to wear you know just kidding but i mean not
yeah and um and and we try to give as much information as possible so you're
equipped to go in there and fit right in Yes.

(01:03:48):
So I think this is really important summary is that the course was built with
these competencies in mind.
So the course was built from the perspective of the health care system.
Essential. We can't go in there like a bull in a china shop and start throwing things around.
We have to go in understanding what the healthcare system is expecting.

(01:04:08):
And then that final chapter is this is sort of the implementation.
Now that you know all that, here's how you can execute it.
It's a roadmap to get a job, roadmap to get out there and find a job,
the job that suits you, and then
the toolkit for all these little extras that you have to fall back on,
to put in your a briefcase yeah

(01:04:28):
and just like a little sort of behind the scenes like when we
were in the early stages of preparing or you know conceiving this
course you pulled up this list of competencies and
said i think this is important do you think this is important and we said yes
that's what we're building this course on so we found this and it's it was in
a another course that uh came out of new york actually um that that prepared

(01:04:52):
any like any worker to go into the health care system.
I said, well, we have to prepare our workers to go into the healthcare system.
I did it. I mean, I had to do it twice, you know, in nursing and in medicine,
go through all these competencies.
And I was like, wow, our people need these.
Yeah. Yeah. So here they are. Yeah.
Understanding what, you know, a medical professional or an entire practice,

(01:05:16):
you know, these core competencies that they're tasked with and trying to figure
out how to juggle all this, you've got to be able to use your term fit right
in, you know, and demonstrate that you understand.
Kind of your role within this entire framework. And I think you've done a great job of this.
And in chapter six, putting it all together, a vision, a roadmap, a toolkit.

(01:05:39):
I mean, it's important that you understand all of the core competencies,
but how does it all work together? And sort of where do you fit in this paradigm?
And the biggest thing I think you need going in is confidence that you can make a difference.
And for those of you, I mean, I know there are are some people that are still
very, you know, everything's rigged to big pharma or insurance. But that's all true.

(01:06:02):
Yeah, we get all that. So the question is, do some of you want to be able to
improve the outcomes with the individual patient in the medical system?
If that's what likes you, this is a great course for you.
Yeah. If you want to work completely independently and outside of that system
entirely, we're seeing doctors and nurses do that and hiring health coaches

(01:06:22):
as well, or you just want to work independently.
But I do think there's a lot of benefit in having a healthy respect for each
other and what we do and the challenges we all face on both sides of the aisle, right?
And this comes up a lot about wanting to bill insurance as a health coach,
you know, and that sitting for the national board could then eventually mean

(01:06:45):
that I, that I can bill for insurance, but, but I'll tell you like that is going
to have its place And that's fantastic, but it's also going to have its limitations.
Just like any, you ask any doctor about the limitations of having to bill insurance
means I can't diagnose my patient the way I might think I can,
because it's got to fit a CPT code. Right. Right.
Yeah. So there's a double-edged sword to all this stuff.

(01:07:06):
So for folks listening in terms of trying to find your place,
think of at the end of the day, what do you really want? And sometimes it's both.
There could be an opportunity for you to really make a difference within the
medical system, working with a like-minded profession of some kind that views
the outcome for patients.
And if we can improve that, everybody's happier.

(01:07:27):
Awesome. I want to be a part of it. And then you can, in many cases,
still have your own deal on the side.
Like this medical practice just becomes a client of yours to a certain degree.
Maybe you're running group programs and they're like, my mind is just buzzing
about how health coaches. Yeah.
The world's your oyster. system. Absolutely. It is. But you know, there's, um.

(01:07:50):
But just on that topic of trying to decide where you want to work and how you
want to work, there's basically two choices to make.
Do you want to work independently, working from home, 100% online,
or even going into a practice that's in your locale to see patients face-to-face,
but be independent and bill independently?

(01:08:12):
You won't get health insurance. insurance yeah you know if you don't have a
job if you're not hired with benefits then you won't have those kinds of benefits
you'll have to fund those things yourself but you but that's the price of independence
right right and but if you get hired to work in a hospital or an institution or a.

(01:08:33):
Managed care organization and hmo hmo yeah um they're going to have a lot of
rules you'll get have benefits, but you might like to have a job.
You know, you might prefer to have a job with a salary and somebody takes care
of it and you get your paycheck and that's, you know, taxes are dealt with and et cetera.
So it's just a matter of seeing what's out there and let it be aligned with

(01:08:55):
you so that you do something that's where your heart is, you know,
because I think you're going to have options, tons of options.
I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so before So before we go,
Michelle was asking, if this is the direction someone wants to go,
in terms of a path to be able to make this your specialty, what courses do we think people need?

(01:09:17):
So I think if you really want to be able to make a difference in that medical
system, I do think, personally speaking, that the national board will open doors for you.
So whether it's our program where you would take both the primary course and
the master coach course. That's your educational ticket.
To then take the additional steps to sit for the national board.

(01:09:39):
This is, I mean, it takes work to sit for that. It's not just,
I graduate from an approved school and boom, I'm national board certified. It's not like that.
There's additional steps. You have to pass their test. You need a coaching log.
So gosh, coaches that are in our program or any other program,
and you guys want to get out and just raise your hand to say,
Hey, I want to, I want to do a practice coaching session.
You know, as long as it's 20 minutes long and you're actually coaching and you're

(01:10:02):
demonstrating competencies that counts, you know, get there and take the master
coach course, whether it's our course or another approved course, that's great.
And then this is going to help you learn the language, learn how to speak and
have a greater understanding of what's coming down top down in the medical world
that you need to be aware of if you want to approach these people. So in the industry, so.

(01:10:22):
Can I interrupt for just one minute on that, on that track?
Cause I looked at the, I don't know what they called them.
It it was a curriculum for the national board certification.
So I looked at their, yeah.
Well, their categories that they need. I don't know what he called it.
It's not competencies, but it was there. It was the job task analysis.

(01:10:45):
It was the, we had to build the curriculum around these.
Yeah. It's like, there's an outline of, of their, of their qualifications that they require.
And, and it did overlap a bit with what we're doing here.
It does. You know, as a health coach, as a certified health coach,
you will have some training in ethics and professional behavior and other things

(01:11:08):
that sort of overlap with this.
But this is very specific to the health care system.
So you just it's fantastic to have absolutely fantastic to have board certification.
So you have your health coach certification, then board certification.
And this is kind of gravy on the top. But you can go into the healthcare system
and get a job with just this course.

(01:11:30):
And then they work on your board certification on the side, if you decide that
you want to go farther, or that you need to, to bill insurance or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I love it. No.
I mean, it's a big topic, all health coaches listening, not just,
not just private, but all health coaches listening.
This, this is going to be one of the big areas of growth.

(01:11:53):
I'm putting a stake in the ground over the next five years. This is going to
be where we see the biggest growth here and it's, gosh, do we need it?
We need it. So, um, you know, this is a fantastic time to go into health coaching,
to be getting your reps and get your coaching practice and become a very good

(01:12:13):
coach, really understand what it is that lights you up and who you want to serve
and how you're going to help kind of solve this issue.
And if you have a soft spot in your heart for helping patients, not just clients,
but patients who are just left bewildered and overwhelmed, and they just need
support and they, To your point, if they've been in the system for a long time,

(01:12:35):
a lot of that self-efficacy and sense of empowerment is no longer there.
So helping that bid them. And that was our goal with this course.
So thank you for putting your expertise and your passion behind both this course,
but also this conversation today. It really comes across.
And anyone interested in finding out more about this course,

(01:12:57):
it's just primalhealthcoach.com under programs.
You're going to find it there. You can certainly just book a call with me or send an email.
And then, so, you know, Aaron's typing in here. So to sit for the board,
you need to take, if you're going to do it with our school, our primary cert,
the Primal Health Coach Institute cert and the Master Coach cert.
Health coaching in a medical practice, to your point, is gravy.

(01:13:19):
It's going to be what kind of helps you speak that language,
I think, or go into from a standpoint of marketing competence.
Are there any other parting words, Aaron or Judith, before we let people go?
My parting words are that Judith worked her tail off to make this a great course
for health coaches and just acknowledgement to you for doing all this work for
us. Thank you. It was fantastic.

(01:13:40):
It was fantastic learning experience for me and a really good, really good work to do.
Nice. Yeah. Awesome. So everybody go out there and show them what health coaches can do, right?
Woohoo! Right. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Judy.
This podcast was brought to you by Primal Health Coach Institute.
To learn more about how to become a successful health coach,

(01:14:02):
get in touch with us by visiting primalhealthcoach.com forward slash call.
Or if you're already a successful health coach, practitioner,
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Connect with us at hello at primalhealthcoach.com and let us know why we need
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