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Talking to patients about healthy lifestyle

Healthcare professional talking to a patient

Introduction

Research shows that if healthcare professionals can spot situations in which they can talk to patients about their health behaviours (e.g. doing more physical activity, stopping smoking) then they may be much more likely to discuss health behaviours during routine consultations.

On the left hand side of the table below is a list of barriers to discussing health behaviours with your patient during a routine consultation; on the right is a list of some suggestions of how you might wish to engage patients in conversations that might be useful for one or more barriers.

For each barrier that applies to you personally, please select from the drop down list on the right hand side a suggestion that you think might help you. Please link one barrier to one suggestion at a time, but link each situation to as many (or as few) suggestions as you like. The same suggestion could be used for more than one situation.

  • If I believe I don’t have a good enough relationship with a patient to talk about healthy lifestyles...

  • If I believe a patient doesn’t want to discuss healthy lifestyles...

  • If I believe I don’t have organisation support to talk to patients about healthy lifestyles...

  • If patients haven’t yet discussed healthy lifestyles with a healthcare professional...

  • If I believe I don’t have anywhere to refer patients for healthy lifestyle conversations...

  • If I believe patients would be offended by me starting a conversation about health lifestyles...

  • If I believe I don’t have the time to talk about healthy lifestyles with patients...

  • If I believe that language may be a barrier to talking about healthy lifestyles with patients...

  • If I believe I'm too busy with other tasks to talk about healthy lifestyles with patients...