Health coaching: a necessary role for medical students?

The objective of this study is to discuss the strong rationale for training medical students in health coaching and explain the structure of a planned programme at the University of Cambridge.

This is a perspective piece.

This article explores the concept of health coaching and evidence for the approach and argues for its necessity within our future National Health Service (NHS). The structure of the planned programme at the University of Cambridge is explained.

Training in health coaching gives clinicians tools and techniques based on psychology, behavioural science and performance coaching to add to their communication skills. This results in person-centred care and improved health behaviour outcomes for patients. Training medical students in the field means they are able to develop the techniques throughout their training and meaningfully contribute to high-quality patient care as part of the wider medical team during their studies.

We believe training medical students in health coaching skills is paramount to ensure the skills of our future workforce keeps pace with the NHS system and population needs.