Capacity Coaching: A New Strategy for Coaching Patients Living With Multimorbidity and Organizing Their Care

Abstract

The prevalence of chronic conditions is growing; to date, 1 in 4 Americans lives with at least one chronic condition. In the population aged 65 years and older, most live with multiple chronic conditions, or multimorbidity. Coaching interventions have been widely touted as a potential way to prevent chronic illness and as a way to help patients better self-manage their chronic illnesses. Health and Wellness Coaching (HWC) is now a respected discipline that offers certification, and HWC for patients with chronic conditions has demonstrated the potential to positively change behaviors and health outcomes. Yet, despite the enthusiasm and advancement of the discipline, the role of HWC has not been examined in light of the latest conceptual and theoretical work in the treatment of multimorbidity. In this article, we briefly describe HWC activities and the way in which they can be modified in alignment with the progress in the field of multimorbidity to form a new type of coaching, Capacity Coaching.

Current trends in health coaching for chronic conditions

“…Their findings indicated that those programs improved care processes, compared to usual care. In the most recent review, Boehmer et al [ 16 ] provided a summary of health and wellness coaching activities in the field of multi-morbidity and called for a new type of intervention, capacity coaching in 2019. Currently, there is no comprehensive systematic review of HC impact on a chronic condition from the angle of patient improvement and detail coaching characteristics, therefore, a systematic review of randomized clinical trials from a comprehensive angle assessing the effect of HC in people with chronic conditions is needed.…”

The burden of treatment in people living with type 2 diabetes: A qualitative study of patients and their primary care clinicians

“…Information systems must be attuned to signals that care may have become overwhelming, e.g., poor fidelity to treatment programs, missed appointments, poor disease control. And patients and their families should receive support that goes beyond disease education (using low-literacy material and peer support [ 28 ] to include self-management training, social support [ 29 ] and capacity coaching [ 30 ]. What may arise is care capable of advancing patient health goals with the smallest treatment burden possible [ 12 , 21 ].…”

Health and Wellness Coaching in Serving the Needs of Today’s Patients: A Primer for Healthcare Professionals

“…Capacity Coaching This model of coaching has been proposed as "subspecialized or a modified" type of HWC when providing coaching to patients with chronic conditions or multimorbidity. 30 approach. A potential confusion and lack of clarity exists among healthcare professionals in differentiating health, and wellness or well-being, and any other type of related coaching; the natural evolution and the differentiation between the two has led to defining a health coach to be more closely focused on the state of physical health, while wellness, well-being, or life coach is more focused on the expanded state of happiness and content about one's being that encompasses various components, including physical, spiritual, emotional, financial, intellectual, environmental, and occupational wellness.…”

“…Capacity Coaching, a novel model of coaching, has been recently proposed as "subspecialized" type of HWC that provides coaching to patients with chronic conditions or multimorbidity. 30 Capacity Coaching builds its model on the work of MDM and aims to understand workload-capacity balance or imbalance that affects patients' abilities. It also explores resources to access and use healthcare and enact self-care, which in turn affects their outcomes.…”