Health and Wellbeing Coaches
What is a Health & Wellbeing Coach (HWBC)?
As part of the PCN multidisciplinary team (MDT), health and wellbeing coaches (HWBCs) use their coaching skills to support patients and service users with lower levels of patient activation in becoming active in reaching their self-identified health and wellbeing goals.
As part of their work, HWBCs will:
- Work alongside health, social care, community, and voluntary sector providers and MDTs
- Provide education and specialist expertise to health staff, thereby improving their skills and understanding of personalised care and behavioural approaches
- Raise awareness within a primary care network (PCN) of tools that enable shared decision making (SDM)
HWBCs carry out their role using a non-judgemental approach, supporting patients to self-identify existing issues and encouraging proactive prevention of new illnesses. This approach requires strong communication and negotiation skills, in order to promote personal choice and positive risk-taking, while addressing potential consequences and ensuring patients take accountability for their decisions, chosen based on what matters to them.
NHSE health and wellbeing coaches.
What are the benefits?
Health and wellbeing coaches (HWBCs) can support patients in making positive choices for their health and wellbeing; consequently, they can lead healthier lives and will be less likely to require the services of health and care centres, reducing the burden of ill-health in the patient population.
Health and wellbeing coaches (HWBCs) can bring the following benefits to patients and PCNs.
For patients:
- Increased levels of patient activation and of preventative behaviours / self-management
- Overall improvement in health outcomes
- Additional time to address patient goals on an individual level, providing more support for them to pursue their own health goals
- Shown to improve two-way communication and partnership working
For PCNs:
- Increased patient activation can enable fewer visits to general practice, reducing demand for practice services
- Reported increase in job satisfaction amongst healthcare staff
- Less waste on account of unnecessary tests and medication
- Long-term, sustained benefits relating to cost reduction and service development
For more information: NHSE / I HWBCs in Yeovil Case Study
What is the scope of their practice?
According to Health Education England (HEE), a health and wellbeing coach (HWBC) is required to provide one-to-one coaching support for people with one or more long-term conditions, adhering to what is important to them, with the aim of:
- Improving people’s knowledge, confidence and skills-levels of ‘patient activation’
- Empowering people to improve their health outcomes and sense of wellbeing
- Preventing unnecessary reliance on clinical service
- Providing interventions such as self-management education and peer support
- Supporting people to establish and attain self-identified goals
- Working with the social prescribing service to support the triaging of referrals that connect people to the right intervention / community-based activities which support their health and wellbeing
- To work as part of a multidisciplinary, multi-agency team to promote health coaching, and to be ambassadors for personalised care and supported self management, modelling the coaching approach in their work
Is funding available for them?
NHS England & NHS Improvement (NHSE / I) have provided the following case study on the effects of health and wellbeing coaches (HWBCs) on patients with long-term conditions in Yeovil.
A South Somerset GP interviewed as part of the case study had the following to say:
“What’s different is probably the perception of what is possible and permissible. We feel in control rather than being an island under attack retreating from the relentless onslaught of demand on one side and reduction in provision on the other.”
For more information: