Occupational therapists are focused on helping patients overcome specific challenges in their daily lives, whether they’re recovering from illness or injury, have been diagnosed with a chronic disease or are facing any other impediment that challenges their routine tasks. Simply put, adding wellness coaching into the therapeutic approach only enhances positive outcomes.
Why? By providing a more supportive approach, wellness coaching empowers patients to more actively engage and manage their own health and wellbeing through goal setting and strategizing to identify and overcome barriers while optimizing their daily function. Wellness coaching touches more areas of a patient’s life by integrating physical, mental and social elements, which all affect how a patient lives in and responds to their day-to-day environment. When a patient makes progress in one area, it’s much easier for that sense of accomplishment to overflow into other areas.
Through lifestyle changes and self-management tactics, wellness coaching helps patients help themselves achieve long-term positive results. Think of it as more of a collaborative process between therapist and patient, rather than a mere set of tasks a patient must work through to fulfill a therapy plan.
There are many key aspects of wellness coaching that can greatly benefit occupational therapy, but here are the most prominent:
Employs a more holistic approach
More than just addressing physical limitations on a patient, wellness coaching encompasses mental, social and environmental factors in addition to physical stressors.
More client-centered care
By collaborating with the patient, wellness coaches can encourage more active participation in strategy and problem-solving, which translates into a more personalized experience for better outcomes. Patients can identify their own needs and reasons for change, and then actively work to bring about that change.
Focus on goal setting
Wellness coaches excel at helping patients establish measurable and achievable goals, so that progress feels attainable in their overall health and wellbeing.
Developing skills for current and future needs
Wellness coaching focuses on finding sustainable strategies for managing stressors across multiple areas, while identifying coping skills that help patients change their behavior when those stressors threaten to derail their progress.
Lifestyle modifications that work in unison
By supporting positive change across multiple areas (diet, exercise, sleep, etc.) wellness coaching helps establish new habits that improve overall health, not just one area.
Integrating wellness coaching into an occupational therapy practice benefits both the therapist and the patient by fostering a more collaborative relationship that typically produces better overall results. Whether it’s working with patients on pain management, chronic condition management, work reintegration, or providing early intervention, wellness coaching can be easily incorporated into occupational therapy.
Learn more about integrating wellness coaching into your occupational therapy practice.
