Counselling Patients to Make Lifestyle Changes: The Role of Physician Self-Efficacy, Training and Beliefs About Causes

Abstract

Three factors that might help explain the extent to which physicians counsel patients to quit smoking and lose weight were examined: counselling self-efficacy, training in behaviour change and beliefs about causes of smoking and being overweight. More aggressive counselling was defined as counselling more patients per month and following up on counselling recommendations. Questionnaires were returned by 85 health maintenance organization physicians. As predicted, physicians with a stronger sense of counselling self-efficacy, and those who had received education in health behaviour change techniques were more aggressive counsellors. Motivational strategies were also explored. Physicians' beliefs about the causes of smoking and being overweight were related to the use of some types of strategies. Implications for increasing physician counselling patients to make behaviour changes are discussed.

Psychiatrists’ Smoking Cessation Activities with Ohio Community Mental Health Center Patients

“…This also happens to be the step in which the psychiatrists had the strongest efficacy expectations. Research has found that physicians with a greater sense of self-efficacy for prevention activities resulted in more frequent physician counseling (Thompson, Schwankovsky, & Pitts, 1993).…”

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“…Further, being screened for one type of cancer, such as colorectal cancer, may also provide an opportunity to promote adherence to other cancer screenings (60). Incorporating such an integrative approach in primary care and other health care settings where colorectal cancer screening is conducted will require overcoming challenges at multiple levels of the health care system, including time constraints (61), reimbursement for the delivery of behavioral risk factor assessment and intervention (62), the availability of appropriate assessment tools for multiple behavioral risk factors (63), and provider willingness and ability to engage in behavior change counseling (64). Some of these challenges may be overcome, or minimized, by combining organizational practice changes (65), with the use of information technology (66) to streamline and automate the delivery of colorectal cancer preventive services.…”

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