When doing a diagnosis and making a proper treatment plan for a patient, it is already halfway through the patient’s recovery and curing of the illness. However, the actual task is to get the patients to follow the treatment. Moreover, the medical healthcare providers can further improvise by gaining patients’ trust through applying motivation techniques which could end up in better health outcomes.
The medical provider makes sure that the patient keeps on following the instruction and follows the treatment correctly. A physician can help patients lead a healthy life but the question arises how do physicians motivate patients to lead a better life?
There are a lot of ways by which physicians can motivate their patients to follow a certain diet and lead a healthy life? How? Read along and find out:
How do physicians motivate patients to lead healthier lives?
The relationship between a patient and his doctor is very meaningful. A patient interacts with the physician and discusses the most private details about their health and a relationship of trust is built between them. A physician can use this trust to divert the attention of the patient towards healthier means of life and motivate them to start living a healthy life.
Here are a few ways by which physicians motivate their patients to lead a healthy life: have a look:
Staying in touch with your patient
To motivate a patient to lead a healthy life, it is important that he stays in touch with a physician who can keep on motivating him from time to time. A physician should set up follow-up checkups for the patient to interact with them in person. This is a great way of having a heart-to-heart talk as well as to know the progress of the patient after he has been completely treated for the illness.
It is a great idea to assign a task to your personal secretary to schedule a follow-up check with the patient. The secretary can always email or call to confirm the meeting with the patient.
The physician can tell them that they are concerned about their health and want to have a follow checkup of the patient. This will make the patient feel comfortable interacting with the physician and caretaker
This will also motivate the patient to follow the instructions wholeheartedly and update the physician regularly about whatever is happening in their life regarding health and lifestyle.
Use brochures
A physician’s practice place should always have a handful of brochures regarding different health conditions and how to combat them. These brochures should be handed out to the patients while they are waiting for their turn or when they are leaving the premises so that they can read about them in their free time and should understand how important it is to follow a healthy lifestyle to have good health and long life.
For instance, a brochure regarding heart disease and the mortality rate might alert the patient and he tries to maintain a healthy diet to avoid heart-related problems.
Workshop invites
Sometimes, the healthcare premises are not the ideal place to motivate a patient. The physician can invite the patient to a workshop where they can be taught how to lead their lives to avoid health issues. The physician can also hold a workshop themselves if there are a handful of patients who he needs to address about the same illness.
For instance, if a physician deals with the majority of diabetic or heart-related diseases patients, then it is important to invite them to a workshop where it is taught about how important it is to incorporate healthy food in their lives. The patients can be briefed about the necessity to read the food labels and to imply their benefits and dangers on their own.
Check progress and give homework
To check whether the patient is following your instructions or not, you need to keep on checking progress and the best way to do this is to give them homework and check their progress. Explain the details of what you want them to do and follow back home and come back and tell them their progress in the next follow-up check-up.
This way you can provide your patient with a journal to note their heart rate, and sugar level, as well as note down their diet, and you can check whether they are following the instructions properly or not.
Community service
Community service is the best possible way for a physician to indulge their patients in a healthy lifestyle. Community service aids a patient to give out important details about their lifestyle and also get them connected with other individuals as well.
Sometimes, additional support is all a patient is looking for to get the right motivation to get themselves into a healthy routine. The community service also helps them to remain religiously attached to their routine.
There are a lot of support groups that provide community service that can help patients get motivated to adopt the right kind of health routine.
For instance, if a patient is dealing with obesity and this is causing him critical health conditions, it is important that the physician gets them enrolled in the support group which is already dealing with people with obesity-related health issues so that they can get motivated and work on it along with their community service members.
Set goals
Goal-oriented motivation always churns out results. This is the best way for your patient to work in the right direction and reach their goal of attaining the healthy life that they are striving for.
Once they have achieved the given goal, give them a bigger goal to achieve, assigning one task at a time.
For example, if a person is a patient of physical therapy and wants to start walking again then it is the job of the physical therapist to make such goals that are manageable by the patient and also achieve the final goal of making the patient walk again on his feet.
It is easier for the patient to achieve the main target in smaller goals so that they can be motivated with their small feats to achieve the final target.
Conclusion
It is very important for the patients to follow a health regime in order to achieve a better life. Physicians can motivate their patients to maintain a healthy lifestyle which can help them avoid critical health conditions.
Sometimes, a patient just wants that extra push that will make them win the battle against their prevailing health condition. The above-mentioned techniques can help in providing the perfect push to motivate a patient to holler towards a healthier life regime.