Abstract
BackgroundNon-communicable diseases are the leading causes of death, largely due to the last century’s often-unhealthy lifestyles. Family medicine (FM) and other physicians can improve patients’ lifestyle behaviors, yet FM residency programs in Israel and other countries do not uniformly deliver lifestyle medicine (LM) training. The readiness of FM residents to counsel on lifestyle issues is not known. The purpose of this study is to assess knowledge, attitudes, and confidence levels of senior Israeli FM residents regarding LM counseling, and to evaluate the influence of LM training and personal health behaviors on residents’ LM knowledge, attitudes, and confidence.MethodsFrom May to June 2017, we surveyed all senior Israeli FM residents regarding their knowledge, attitudes, confidence, and personal health behaviors. We compared health behaviors, attitudes, and confidence in counselling between: 1) trained residents vs. untrained residents; 2) physically active residents vs. not physically active residents; 3) residents with a BMI < 25 vs. those with a BMI > 25; and 4) residents who eat a Mediterranean diet vs. those who do not.ResultsA total of 169 senior Israeli FM residents were surveyed, and 143 completed the survey, a response rate of 84.6%. Senior FM residents said they considered LM counseling to be an integral part of their role and an effective tool by which to improve a patient’s health. Yet, their knowledge of LM and their confidence in delivering LM counseling are low. Compared with untrained residents (n = 84), LM-trained residents (n = 55) had higher knowledge scores (30.9% vs. 13.1%, p = 0.016) and were more confident in their ability to impact their patients’ behaviors (53.7% vs. 34.5%, p = 0.004). Residents’ positive personal health behaviors correlated with a higher level of confidence to provide LM counseling.ConclusionsFM physicians can play a key role in the management of patients with chronic diseases. Israeli FM residents consider counseling patients about a healthy lifestyle to be an integral part of their work, but do not feel well prepared to do so.Dedicated LM training and resident’s personal health promotion may improve critically important levels of LM counseling and patient outcomes, and this training should therefore become a higher priority.
Highlights
Non-communicable diseases are the leading causes of death, largely due to the last century’s oftenunhealthy lifestyles
Israeli Family medicine (FM) residents consider counseling patients about a healthy lifestyle to be an integral part of their work, but do not feel well prepared to do so
Our results show that senior FM residents consider lifestyle medicine (LM) counseling to be an integral part of their role and an effective tool by which to improve a patient’s health
Summary
Non-communicable diseases are the leading causes of death, largely due to the last century’s oftenunhealthy lifestyles. More than 40% of chronic conditions could be avoided through the adoption of healthy lifestyle recommendations, according to Mokdad et al [4], with data from the Nurses’ Health Study (1980–2014; n = 78,865) and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986–2014, n = 44, 354) suggesting that healthy lifestyles could substantially reduce premature mortality in U.S adults This would require healthier lifestyle habits such as not smoking, maintaining a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2, participating in at least 30 min most days of moderate to vigorous physical activity, drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol, and having a high diet quality score (upper 40%) [5].
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