Better health outcomes for all

For a balanced life, more fulfilling careers and a sustainable healthcare system.

Every week multiple people ask me two questions…

  • What is coaching?
  • Why do doctors seek a coach, how does it help them?

To answer these questions I have written a white paper, Coaching for Doctors: A Balanced Life which specifically seeks to explain the what, why and how of applying coaching in medicine. 

Here’s a short overview of the white paper’s focus. The paper explores how coaching can help doctors and employers of doctors in four key ways:

  1. Deliver excellent patient care, improving health outcomes for the patient by improving the interpersonal skill of the doctor, harnessing the impact of the relationship between doctors, patients and their families for better health outcomes.
  2. Achieve work-life balance for doctors by clarifying meaning and purpose in a medical career that is fulfilling, joyful and sustainable.
  3. To demonstrate how the systemic use of coaching can improve the whole healthcare system by recognising and enabling the leadership potential of doctors.
  4. Prevent burnout systemically by using coaching as a means to build individual skills, and as a vehicle for identifying and disrupting the cultures and systems that perpetuate burnout across the healthcare system.

Coaching is a simple process in some ways. The coachee doctor brings their concerns, aspirations, dilemmas and goals to a confidential conversation with the coach and together they bring their full attention to deeply understanding what the way forward is for the coachee doctor.

Coaching is also a complex process in that it seeks to unearth the unknown, create new insight and different perspectives. It is a different kind of conversation to most others. Systemic use of coaching for doctors has the potential to change the healthcare system.

I’ve seen it happen already with many individual doctors taking action in their own lives and in their workplaces with the support of ongoing and/or periodic coaching. Thank you for joining me in this conversation. If you or someone you know is interested to learn how coaching can help please go ahead and book a time for us to talk.