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There is an increasing focus on the overall wellness of health care providers in the United States. Two out of three Americans are overweight, indicating that those trying to bring about behavior change in the health care environment are in need of behavior change themselves. Health Science Graduate programs (dentistry, medicine, nursing, optometry, pharmacy health and rehabilitative sciences, and veterinary medicine) are academically intense and stressful environments that may impede students’ abilities to make healthy lifestyle choices. The First Year Graduate Health Sciences Student On-Boarding Project aims to identify barriers to students making healthy choices during their education, aid students in creating wellness goals, and provide a mechanism through health coaching to achieve these goals. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the wellness goals identified by the students and the health coaching intervention being provided to them.
Methods:
A descriptive study was conducted on the wellness goals created by health sciences students as part of a wellness on-boarding intervention program. Students were asked to create personalized wellness action plans aimed at identifying health and wellness goals the students wanted to achieve over the next 90 days. Wellness goals were encouraged to be S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and include a Time component). After formulation of the wellness goals in a personalized wellness action plan, students are assigned to a health coach for a semester. Coaches are Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) students who have completed an innovative online learning module which on the foundation for wellness coaching. The Buckeye Wellness Coaching module consists of a series of six lessons that require the FNP students to (1) define the role of a coach in attaining wellness, (2) review the dimensions of health and wellness, (3) discuss the process of coaching, (4) analyze coaching and communication skills, (5) identify the challenges associated with coaching, and (6) integrate coaching skills into practice in order to facilitate sustainable wellness behaviors. The online coaching module includes stress assessment tools, information about motivational interviewing, links to wellness resources for coaches, and triage and referral guidelines for the onboarding student participants.
Results:
Fifty-five Wellness Plans were completed by participants. Plans allowed participants to outline two wellness goals, of which 44 participants completed both. The most common primary and secondary goals were related to physical activity with 44% and 43% of responses respectively. Examples of physical activity goals included “I want to wake up a little earlier in the morning to run for 20 minutes each day. Nutrition was next in frequency with 34% of primary and 20% of secondary goals. Examples of nutrition goals included: “Eat two servings of fruits/vegetables a day”. The third most common wellness goals were related to stress reduction with 9% of the students identifying it as a primary or secondary goal. Stress reduction goals included: “I will give myself at least 1 hour per day away from work and school. I will use that time to read or watch a TV show and zone out”.
Conclusion:
Findings support the need for tools to aid first year health sciences graduate students in achieving their wellness goals. Improving the wellness of future health care providers may better prepare them to be mechanisms of change for their patients. Additionally, the structure of the health coaches training program is appropriate for multiple disciplines to complete. This diversity may allow for more targeted or even cross disciplinary student-coach relationships, of which could be explored in future studies on the programs efficacy.