The Benefits of Being a Lifelong Learner

While chatting with another GP last week, he shared how proud he was of his daughter. She had just passed her exams to become an Accident and Emergency Consultant and said how glad he was she could now relax because she would never have to take another exam again.

There once was a time when I thought like that. I remember thinking, “Great, I’ve qualified as a doctor, and gained my Fellowship in General Practice, I can stop studying now.”

How wrong I was.

Because as you know, medicine is constantly evolving as new information and research comes to light, requiring us as practitioners to absorb this new learning, upskill and change our medical practice accordingly.

Luckily, I’ve always loved learning and over the years have studied the neuroscience of leadership, workplace coaching, positive psychology, nature as therapy, meditation, gained accreditation as a menopause practitioner and retrained in Lifestyle Medicine.

My husband sometimes asks, “Why do you keep studying? Don’t you know enough now?”

My answer is always the same. “The more I study, the more I realise how little I know.”

It’s my passion. My thirst for knowledge will never be quenched. As a kid, I always had my nose stuck in a book. I still do. I should probably take out shares in Amazon and Booktopia for the number of books I’ve bought and devoured.

Are you a lifelong learner too?

At medical school, I was taught the traditional Western medicine approach. Take a history. Conduct an examination. Come up with a list of the most likely diagnoses. Discuss with the patient. Prescribe the appropriate treatment and arrange for follow-up.

After becoming a GP, I discovered that despite my best efforts to explain everything carefully to my patients and encourage them to shift towards healthier habits, it often felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall.

For example, there was Sue, recently diagnosed with type-two diabetes. She was keen to understand what she needed to do to best manage her condition.
We spoke at length about her diet, how to get more exercise into her schedule and how important it was to keep her blood glucose readings at as optimal a level as possible.

She attended the surgery regularly for her check-ups, but struggled to keep her diabetes under control, and the lifestyle changes didn’t happen, even though she had the best of intentions.

Then there was Richard, who had high blood pressure, a family history of heart disease, smoked like a chimney and had a terrible smoker’s cough.

Like Sue, he would come in for his check-ups.
Like Sue, he struggled with the lifestyle changes needed to improve his overall health. He tried to quit smoking on numerous occasions. He went on all sorts of crazy diets to lose weight. He thought about joining a gym but never got there.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot that is good about the traditional approach, except it doesn’t bring about behavioural change and it fails to address the root causes of disease.

In lifestyle medicine, the focus is on prevention and reduction of risk of chronic disease.

Which means addressing the need to adopt healthy eating, develop a positive attitude, continue taking a mental stretch i.e. learning new things, doing regular exercise and getting out into nature, getting enough restorative sleep, maintaining strong social connections and developing effective stress management skills.

If I had known about lifestyle as medicine then, I would have taken a different approach with Sue, Richard, and my other patients to put them firmly back in the driving seat of their health and empower them to make the changes they saw as valuable to improving their health.

Lifestyle medicine practitioners include the social determinants of health when evaluating an individual’s health challenges. It makes a world of difference when you understand how much social support someone has, whether they can access fresh food, a local park or if they can afford their prescribed medication.

This is where a coaching approach helps to learn how much a person wants to see an improvement in their health, the strength of that desire and importantly their confidence in manifesting it.

Motivational interviewing, appreciative inquiry, and positive psychology are techniques and concepts that can be used within a consultation to help someone achieve their health goals.

Every practitioner can utilise coaching skills for the benefit of their patients.

Which is why I’m proud to announce I’m now an accredited health coach and will be using these skills when working with leaders and professionals seeking better life balance, and recovery from burnout or chronic stress.

Have you ever worked with a coach to help you reach your health goals?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.