![\"\"](\"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/coach.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt is nothing new that there\u2019s inevitable overlap between the practice of medicine and providing sound health coaching. Ideally, there should be a seamless continuum between the two endeavors, but that could only exist where there is a continuum of cooperation and respect. Health Coaches need to be careful with how we describe and present our work. While health coaching is a vibrant movement, it is still a junior partner to \u201ctraditional medicine\u201d and for self-preservation; we should seek to avoid direct \u201cturf wars\u201d with Physicians.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The most balanced approach requires continuous consideration of the distinctions between these complementary fields. While there will always be principled differences, the practical applications change steadily along with knowledge and technology. The most prudent approach is for\u00a0Health Coaches\u00a0to simply concede medicine\u2019s proprietary terms. We need to understand them, and can use them, but anytime we do we must draw distinctions that educate our clients about the difference in objectives and procedures of these complementary endeavors. In that sense, there are no \u201cforbidden words\u201d, but there are plenty of places where lack of clarity in purpose and practice can cause problems.\u00a0Some<\/em>\u00a0of the major terms that should be conceded include:<\/p>\n Health Coaches should strive to embody in our mission what comes from consideration of those terms. We develop relationships with clients, we are not in the practice of seeking responsibility for treating patients. We are helpful guides in exploring the vast, common sense resources of the field of wellness, not prescribing proprietary agents or using medical modalities to treat disease. We act as individual guides on a quest that prioritizes personalized discovery and anecdotal utility, not practitioners who prescribe antidotes approved by impersonal population-based investigations.<\/p>\n We look for associated (natural) influences that can combine to re-establish balance, not for a cause or diagnosis that be controlled by the use of a foreign\/artificial agent. Health Coaches are about beings, synergy, elasticity, balance, flourishing and optimization. Medicine predominantly lays claim to systems that don\u2019t display those features.<\/p>\n \u201cThe doctor of the future will give no medication but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.\u201d<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Each term, of course, could be expanded upon greatly as time permits. Back in 1903, Thomas Edison<\/a> said that \u201cThe doctor of the future will give no medication but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.\u201d Edison was simply wrong. Health Coaches should focus on care of the human frame and diet which are the wellsprings of function and flourishing. That\u2019s a big task that requires ever-increasing knowledge and wisdom.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the human \u201cmachine\u201d is inevitably subject to decay of various sorts and severities. Medicine will always have a very important place in providing resources for comfort where nature has been pushed to failure \u2013 which is not an uncommon occurrence. The line between those positions shifts over time, but until utopia breaks out, reality will maintain a vast market for both types of emphasis. For now, it is up to the junior partner to hold up their banner while keeping the peace.<\/p>\n Originally printed on the FDN blog<\/a>. Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\nPatient, practice, diagnosis, cause, disease\/pathology, prescribing, medicine, treatment, management, effectiveness, intervention and cure.<\/b><\/h4>\n
Health Coaches are about beings, synergy, elasticity, balance, flourishing and optimization.<\/b><\/h4>\n
\n