Abstract
Objectives:
Healthy lifestyle is recommended in clinical guidelines for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Research previously identified a gap between lifestyle recommendations and their implementation in clinical practice. In this paper, we describe a pilot educational program aimed to promote providers′ awareness of their own lifestyles, and to explore whether increased personal awareness enhances providers′ willingness to engage in lifestyle-change discussion with patients.
Methods:
Two primary-care urban clinics in Northern Israel participated in the program, which consisted of a series of six biweekly educational sessions, each lasting 2–4 hours. Each session included both knowledge-based and experiential learning based on complementary medicine modalities. Surveys at the end of the program and a year later provided the program evaluation.
Results:
Thirty-five personnel participated in the program. Thirteen (13) of the 20 participants (65%) reported an attitude change regarding eating habits after the program. At 1-year follow up, 24 of the 27 respondents (89%) stated that they were more aware of their eating habits and of their physical activity compared with precourse status. Twenty-three (23) of 27 respondents (85%) stated that after the program they were better prepared to initiate a conversation with their patients about lifestyle change.
Conclusions:
An integrated educational approach based on knowledge-based and complementary and alternative medicine experiential modalities, aimed to facilitate self-awareness, may enhance learners′ attitude change. The findings demonstrate readiness of learners to reexamine their lifestyles. Increased self-awareness helped participants to make a positive attitude change regarding eating habits and physical activity and was associated with participants' increased engagement in lifestyle-change discussions with patients. The teaching approach had longstanding effect, noted in the one-year follow-up.
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