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As a health care provider, how do you address your patient’s lack of physical activity? Other than asking if they exercise and/or advising them that they should exercise, how can you draw a connection between regular physical activity and health in the patient’s eyes? The American College of Sports Medicine’s Exercise is Medicine Program © has guidelines detailing physical activity advice.
The first step in addressing a patients’ level (or lack thereof) of exercise is to simply plant the seed. It is unrealistic to expect a patient to walk out of the doctor office with a prescription in hand and begin walking the advised moderate-intensity 150 minutes per week with a smile on their face. As much as we want to think that can happen, it doesn’t. People don’t change health behaviors overnight. So the health care provider, with their limited time with each patient, can perhaps open the door to a different way of thinking about physical activity for their inactive and unhealthy patients.
After making the case for how physical activity can help them, here are 3 tips to get a patient to at least think about exercise:
- Ask your patient if they have ever thought about trying to get more active?
- Ask them, “What is one thing you can see yourself doing to move more?
- Tell the patient to forget what is shown on reality TV weight loss shows or what they see on magazine covers.
The patient doesn’t have to come up with answers on the spot. The doctor is simply getting them to think a bit about activity and open up their mind about the possibilities of physical movement. The bottom line is that people will never change until they are ready. So the next best thing besides telling them what to do is to spark their curiosity, offer resources and go from there.
According to behavior change theory, the first step toward change is thinking about it or the awareness of thinking about it. There is a lot of “stuff” that happens between thinking about changing a behavior to actually doing the behavior. Often not enough attention is paid to these cognitive shifts responsible for the foundation of success. One pivotal step a patient can take is to open themselves to learning about health, fitness and wellness. A physician can guide a patient to books, documentaries or classes on health, for example. When I worked as an exercise physiologist in a clinical setting, I developed a patient handout that detailed community health and fitness resources and providers which was handed out to patients.
Physicians have influence on how a patient feels regarding their health fitness. Plant the seed and see what happens.